Mildred Thran, 85, world traveler

Mildred S. Thran loved to come home to Atlanta as much as she loved to leave it.

She stayed in touch with friends from her Druid Hills girlhood and still uttered a sigh every time she spotted the city skyline around the bend.

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Mildred ‘Tish’ Thran traveled to Jordan, Egypt and other countries, but she always loved returning home to Atlanta.

But as a girl, her favorite stories were about children around the world.

Later, she read those stories to her own children.

“Whenever she read that book, she wanted to go to all those places,” said her daughter Eugenia Burch of Atlanta.

“She believed in expanding her horizons and seeing the whole wide world, not just a little piece of it down here in Atlanta,” her daughter said.

The graveside service for Mrs. Thran is 2 p.m. Wednesday at Arlington Memorial Park. Mrs. Thran, 85, of Atlanta died of complications from surgery Sunday in Jacksonville, where she had been on vacation. H.M. Patterson & Son, Arlington Chapel, is in charge of arrangements.

Mrs. Thran, whose friends called her Tish, traveled to all the national parks and the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.

“She went more places than 10 people put together — to Japan and all over Asia, to Africa and South America, to Europe many times and to every state in the U.S.,” her daughter said.

That’s her riding a donkey in Jordan on her way to visit Petra. That’s her exploring Egypt and strolling through a street market in India.

“Meeting different people and learning about different cultures intrigued her,” her daughter said.

“She taught us to love other people and to be inquisitive and interested in the world,” she said.

The only time Mrs. Thran moved away from Atlanta was to attend Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, now Randolph College. After she graduated, she returned to her hometown and met her husband, Udo Thran, at the now-defunct Aunt Fanny’s Cabin restaurant.

The couple married in 1948. After her husband’s death, she continued to take her family to the restaurant every Valentine’s Day to celebrate his memory.

Mrs. Thran tended to be shy in crowds and was most comfortable in the company of children.

She spent 20 years at Morgan Falls Elementary and Woodland Elementary schools, mainly as a fifth-grade English and reading teacher.

“Children at that age are still sponges and so sweet and loving,” her daughter said. “She loved having them in her classroom all day where she could really get to know them individually.”

After she retired, she devoted much of her volunteer time to helping children. She stayed in touch with Japanese children she had gotten to know as a teacher and tutored them in English.

She led children’s tours at the High Museum, the Carter Center and Callanwolde Fine Arts Center.

She read stories and led crafts projects at the Kelly Street Mission, which caters to preschool underprivileged children.

And she worked at a local church’s soup kitchen, where she helped pack bagged lunches and made sure there was a cookie in each one.

“She loved this city and always wanted to give back,” her daughter said.

“Whenever we would get on the connector and come around the corner and she’d see that beautiful, huge Atlanta, she’d would gasp and say, ‘I can’t believe this is my city. It’s going to be as big as Manhattan someday.”

“This was her home,” her daughter said. “She was proud of it and she always loved it.”

Other survivors include her son, Richard Thran of Alpharetta; another daughter, Christianna Dougherty of Alpharetta; her brother, Forrest Smith of Kennesaw; six grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.