Obituary: Ida Bartholomew Gillson

In the early years of our club's existence, when the membership was small, each individual bore a very close relationship to the whole group and exercised a much greter influence upon the trend of the organization than can be possible at the present time. There are now living but twenty-four active resident members who joined during the first dozen years of the club's life.

To this early group belonged Mrs. Ida Bartholomew Gillson who passed away June fifteenth, 1929. Her early girlhood was spent in Warren, Ohio. When she was sixteen, Cleveland became her home and there she met and was married to Mr. Gillson. Her twenty-six years of residence in Wilmette were marked by interested participation in the worthwhile activities of the town. Mrs. Gillson served for many years on the speakers' bureau of the Parent-Teacher Association. The talks she gave in this connection throughout the state were an outgrowth of her rich experience as a teachert, wife, mother, and home maker, and were presented with a simplicity and earnestness that held her hearers and directed them toward the highest ideals.

Even during the last years of her life Mrs. Gillson maintained her interest in literature and curent topics, attending the book reviews at the club and making many a keen and comprehensive commentary on the books and events under discussion. Her mentality, always allert, retained its high quality to the end, aided no doubt by a delightful sense of humor, the habit of wide reading, and even the committing to memory of favorite poems and hymns. She enjoyed feasts of the mind and spirit as much as the work of her hands, of which she accomplished so much.

Those members of the club who knew Mrs. Gillson, enjoyed and profited by that friendship and the entire organization cannot help but benefit by the high character of such a member.