Memorial services for Billie Cliett Taylor, 78, of Bakersfield, Calif., will be held Saturday, May 15, at Olive Drive Church in Bakersfield.

Born Nov. 2, 1931, in Bainbridge, Ga., Mrs. Taylor died on April 30, 2010.

Mrs. Taylor, who was a talented pianist, received a bachelor’s degree in music from Valdosta State College (now university). She also received training in church music, including the pipe organ, in Atlanta, Ga. Following college, she met and married Bill Taylor, an Air Force lieutenant, in 1953, a union that endured for almost 57 years.

Billie and Bill had two sons, Lee and Tim, during Bill’s graduate studies at Tallahassee, Fla. They moved to the Silicon Valley area of California in the mid-1950s. Billie became organist at a church in Santa Clara, Calif., for 18 years, and she taught private piano lessons at home. She and her husband moved to Bakersfield in 1974, where they were both active at the First Baptist Church, now Olive Drive Church. She was a devoted Mrs. Taylor faced first Meniere’s disease, which took away most of her hearing and the joy of music in the 1990s, and then pancreatic cancer for the last 16 months.

Survivors include her husband, Bill Taylor; two sons, Lee and Tim, and their wives; her step-mother, Nita Talbert; three brothers, special friend Mary Ann Goldsmith; many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Basham Funeral Care in Bakersfield, Calif., is in charge of arrangements.