Dorothy Mae Ellison

Dorothy was born in Savannah, the youngest of five, in a house with an upright piano that nobody else in the family could play. By nine she was playing hymns for the Sunday school; by sixteen she was teaching the neighbors’ children for a quarter a lesson.

She married Walter Ellison in 1956 and followed him to Asheville, where he taught chemistry and she opened her front parlor to students. For fifty-two years, Tuesday through Saturday, the door was unlocked at three o’clock and somebody was always playing scales. She played the organ at St. Cecilia’s for nearly as long, and never once missed an Easter.

She wrote letters: thank-you notes, birthday cards, a page to every former student who sent a wedding announcement, all in blue ink and a hand you could set type by. When Walter died in 2014 she kept writing, and she kept the roses he had planted along the side of the house.

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.

She is survived by her children, Ruth, James and Ann; eight grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and several hundred people who can still play “Für Elise” because of her.