FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. — September 28, 2022, is a day we all will never forget. It’s for sure a day Carol Lilic will always remember.
Carol Lilic called her brother Robert Knes and her sister-in-law Ilonka Knes at their Fort Myers Beach home, but no one answered.
“When I learned that they had not been evacuated I called the house right away.” Lilic said. “I didn’t get to talk to them. Their phone rang and rang, and I just left a message for them wishing they would be safe and told them that I loved them.”
She recorded that message in tears, hoping they heard it before they died.
Her brother was found right after the storm.
Ilonka was not found until more than 100 days after Hurricane Ian.
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Both were discovered with their life jackets on.
“They were hand-in-hand, and she ended up slipping somehow away from him because they were very close in proximity where they found the two of them,” Lilic said.
Ilonka and Bob have been inseparable since the day they met.
Bob was a traveler and so was Ilonka.
He lived in Turkey for ten years, and during that time, he met the love of his life.
“Somewhere in there, my brother, who never wrote to my mother, got a pen pal, and her name was Ilonka,” Lilis remembered. “This is way before match.com, or anything like that happened. This a pen and a paper and a stamp and an envelope.”
Through letters, they fell in love.
“They got married on Christmas eve, 1980. My husband and I took them to downtown Chicago to a court house they got married in front of a judge.”
Simple but so them.
“We then took them to their choice: White Castle for hamburgers on the way home and then threw a car wash,” Lilic recalled.
Lilic says Ilonka was very special.
“I, many times, told Ilonka you were an angel to be with my brother because I got to live with my brother,” said Lilic. “I am just so glad she loved him as much as she did, and I know he loved her back, and that was very special.”
Then in 1985, they moved to Fort Myers Beach. 114 Tropical Shores Way. A home they grew old in. A home they were in until they took their very last breath.
“If there is a positive out of this, Lilic pondered. “I am glad they went together. And they will be together now forever.”
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