Kitty Branch was not going to let a broken hip slow her down. Not even at 103 years old.
“Mother felt like she had to push herself,” said her only daughter Kay Branch McKenzie, of Marietta. “Every day she got up, fixed her hair, put on her makeup and her jewelry and went downstairs. That was just mother.”
Katherine Hunter Branch, who loved to be called Kitty by friends, died Sunday at home in her sleep. She was 104. A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at Trinity Presbyterian Church, 3003 Howell Mill Road NW, Atlanta. SouthCare Cremation Society and Memorial Centers of Marietta is handling arrangements.
Mrs. Branch was a “gracious and grand southern lady,” said family friend and former neighbor Ann David.
“I never saw her ruffled in any way,” she said. “I really don’t know any other way to put it.”
Harllee Branch III, of Sacramento, CA, said his mother had a “classic old Atlanta, soft southern accent.” He said is mother once got lost in New York while heading to the train station, so she asked a police officer for directions.
“She said he said told her if she walked as slow as she talked, she’d never make the train,” he laughed. “If you heard her talk, you knew she was from the south.”
Mrs. Branch traveled extensively with her husband, Harllee Branch Jr., former chairman and chief executive of the Southern Company, who died in 2000. She was adored by many of his business associates, in part because of her southern charm, said her son Barry Branch, of Atlanta.
“She was wonderful with the wives and families of the executives,” he said. “She was great with names and faces and that ultimately helped my father in his career.”
Before traveling the globe with her husband, Mrs. Branch was an elementary school teacher in the 1930s and she had been an avid reader since her youth. Her love for teaching and literature stayed with her through the years.
“She gave my girls a list of 10 books they had to read during their lifetime,” Mrs. McKenzie said. “And of course they were books she’d read. And she kept a list of all of the books, hundreds of books, she’d ever read in notebooks.”
The enormous amount of reading Mrs. Branch did likely helped build her vocabulary, which came in handy as she regularly worked crossword puzzles from New York Times.
“When my father was alive they each got a copy of the Sunday New York Times so they could each have a puzzle,” Mrs. McKenzie. “That was definitely a competitive moment for the two of them.”
But ever after her husband died, Mrs. Branch continued to work the puzzles, in ink. She even did one the day before she died.
“Mother always finished what she started,” Barry Branch said. “And that morning, she decided to do the puzzle after breakfast instead of after lunch, and she finished it.”
Mrs. Branch is also survived by a third son, David Branch of Atlanta; a sister; 12 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
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