Ilah Grile

Ilah Faye Ogan Grile, age 110, of Pennville, Indiana, passed away at 10:40 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, at her home with her family by her side. 

Ilah was confirmed the oldest living person in the state of Indiana. 

She was born on Saturday, Feb. 27, 1915, in Pennville, Indiana. She married Willard Herbert Grile on Sunday, April 6, 1941, in Jay County, Indiana. 

Ilah graduated from Pennville High School, Class of 1933. She was a lifetime resident of Jay County. She sold candy door to door as a child, growing up on her parents’ 40-acre farm just outside of Pennville. In her early years she discovered her love of baking. 

In 1933, she attended the World’s Fair in Chicago by hitching a ride on a flatbed truck of a friend of a friend’s father. 

Ilah and her husband, Willard, loved to travel, often camping across the United States. They had been to the Badlands National Park, Yellowstone National Park and Branson, Missouri. 

Beginning in 1969, she co-owned the I&M Foodliner grocery store in Pennville with her son, Mike, for just around 18 years. Ilah was a member of the Sugar Grove Church of the Nazarene, where she taught Sunday School for over 50 years.

Ilah will be forever missed by her son, Michael (Gilda) Grile, Pennville, Indiana; grandchildren Ryan M. (Cindy) Grile, Ossian, Indiana, and Jeff D. Grile, Pennville, Indiana; great-grandchildren, Michael, Cathryn and Allison, all of Ossian, Indiana; and several nieces and nephews.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Willard Herbert Grile; father, William Albert Ogan; mother, Alice Arvilla (Stewart) Ogan; and siblings, Raymond Ogan, George Ogan, Keith Ogan, Edna Trythall, Mable Austin, Eva Ogan, Atha Ogan and Ruby Shoemaker.

Family and friends may gather to share and remember at Walker & Glancy Funeral Home, located at 109 W. Windsor St., Montpelier, Indiana, on Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, from 2 to 6 p.m. and one hour prior to services on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026.

A service to celebrate Ilah’s life will be at Walker & Glancy Funeral Home at 11 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, with Pastors Dan Sickles and Mike Heckman officiating. Interment will follow in the Pennville I.O.O.F. Cemetery in Pennville.

Preferred memorials can be made to Sugar Grove Church.

Arrangements are being handled by Walker & Glancy Funeral Home in Montpelier.

Condolences may be expressed at glancyfuneralhomes.com.