Alison Gillon rarely had to search for the answer to a question if her mother, Edith Gillon, was in earshot.
The elder Gillon was like an encyclopedia. She had a number of historical facts stored away, and could retrieve the information at the drop of a hat, her daughter said.
“What she loved more than anything was learning,” said Alison Gillon, of Atlanta.
And she learned as much as she did by reading almost everything she could get her hands on.
“She read books that were thought of as classics and popular around the world,” said her brother, James Brawner, of DeKalb County. “I tried to read those same books, but I was totally lost and disinterested in the subject, but she was not.”
In her later years, as Edith Gillon’s eyesight began to fail, her family thought she could still enjoy books if she listened to someone reading, but books-on-tape just weren’t her thing.
“She’d say, ‘It’s just so slow!’ when we’d try to get her to listen,” her daughter said. “She really did love to read.”
And more than just reading, Gillon loved knowledge, Brawner said.
“She seemed to want to know everything there was to know,” he said. “She loved to learn.”
Edith Stewart Brawner Gillon, of Atlanta, died Tuesday of complications from vascular disease. She was 93.
A service was held Saturday at H.M. Patterson & Son, Spring Hill Chapel, which was also in charge of arrangements. Interment followed the service at Westview Cemetery.
The former Edith Brawner grew up in Greenville, about 20 miles west of LaGrange. She learned to read at an early age, her daughter said.
“When she was 2- and 3-years old, her father would put her on his knee and read the paper to her,” Alison Gillon said. “And after a while they realized she wasn’t memorizing the words, but that she could read.”
Brawner said he was told a similar story by his mother and grandmother, adding that his sister started first grade early as well.
She graduated from high school in Greenville and went to college at the University of Georgia. There, her daughter said, she studied piano under Hugh Hodgson, after whom the university’s school of music is named. She earned a music degree, but took enough literature classes that she could have taken on a second major, her daughter said.
After college she met George H. Gillon Jr., an Atlanta real estate lawyer, and married him in 1951. Together the couple reared two children, and were married for nearly 40 years when he died in 1990.
Edith Gillon not only shared her love of music with her children, but she also gave private piano lessons in her home, her brother said.
In the greater Atlanta community Gillon was part of the Atlanta Music Club and persuaded the group to bring Luciano Pavarotti to Atlanta for a recital, her daughter said.
“She said, ‘I told them they needed to do this’, and she was very proud of that recital,” her daughter said.
Gillon also was quite an embroiderer, and won several awards for her designs. But more often than not, Gillon could be found reading, family members said.
“She just devoured books,” her brother said. “So much so that I don’t know how she had time for all of the other things she did.”
In addition to her daughter and brother, Gillon is survived by her son Stewart Greene Gillon of Atlanta.
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