It sounds like your lilies got the fungal disease botrytis.

-Helen

Here is a link that might be useful: plantlilies.com botrytis link

Thank you, Helen, for your reply. It does indeed look like botrytis that I saw on the website. Thanks for that link. I am going to dig them up to see what the bulb is like since this is the second year I have noticed this problem and thought that it was our hot summers these last two years. Would it be OK to treat the soil and plant something else in its place or would it affect whatever I planted in that space? Thanks again.
Jacquie