Esta Maude Higgins Brian, 89 of Ball Ground, Georgia passed away Wednesday, September 7, 2022, at Village Park Milton, after a long battle with cancer. Esta had lived in Ball Ground since 1999, after moving there from Dekalb County where she had lived since moving to the Atlanta area with her family in 1973.
Esta was raised in rural Alabama and Tennessee, after which she became a registered nurse, married an Air Force pilot, and spent many years moving around the country and raising children before landing in the Atlanta area. She lost her husband at a relatively young age in 1974, and spent many years raising children as a single parent. She returned to full-time nursing in Atlanta, and finished her career at St. Joseph's hospital where she worked for twenty-four years. After retiring, she enjoyed church activities, traveling, being a mother for a dependent adult child, and spending time with family, friends, and grandchildren.
Esta was born May 29, 1933 to Wiley Thomas Higgins, Sr. and Beulah Patterson Higgins in a four-room house in northern Alabama near a community called Waterloo. Wiley was a farmer who raised hogs and planted corn, wheat, soybeans, and hay. The second of three children, Esta lived with her family on her grandfather's 700 acre farm until it was purchased by TVA for the construction of Pickwick Lake. The family moved to Coldwater, Tennessee, where Esta attended grade school and graduated from Blanche High School in May 1951. She was a cheerleader there all four years. After high school she entered St. Thomas School of Nursing in Nashville, where she was elected Miss St. Thomas by the student body her senior year. She married Hubert Murrel Brian, Jr. ("Murrel") of Ethridge, Tennessee on September 11, 1954, the week after her graduation from St. Thomas. The two had been introduced by their mothers who were friends. Murrel was a USAF pilot who had flown fighter planes in the Korean conflict, and he went on to serve as an air crew commander on B-52 bombers in Vietnam. Esta and Murrel lived on many Air Force bases around the country after marrying. Their first daughter, Lisa Carol, was born in 1957 in Clovis, New Mexico. Their second daughter, Nancy Jane, was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1959, and their son, David Murrel, was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1965. Murrel retired and the family moved to the Atlanta, GA area in 1973. He suffered a heart attack and passed away at the age of forty-five in 1974, while working at Dobbins AFB. Esta later survived breast cancer in the late 1970s, while working as a single parent and taking chemotherapy treatments on her lunch hour. In 1982 she joined St. Joseph's hospital in Atlanta, where she would work as a registered nurse for twenty-four years, winning the Mother McCauley award for outstanding service in January 1989. She moved to Ball Ground, Georgia in 1999, where she became a long-time member of the congregation at Orange United Methodist Church in Canton. She lost her daughter Nancy to breast cancer in 2006. Late in life, she reconnected with a high school boyfriend, Douglas Wayne Gattis, and they were married from 2011 until his death in 2019.
She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2020, which she fought until her death. She reflected that her road had been rough at times, but the rewards had been great, and therefore she had no regrets. She was most proud of her accomplishments in motherhood and nursing. Her faith was strong, and she was not afraid of dying.
Visitation will be Wednesday, September 14th from 4-7pm at Darby Funeral Home in Canton, Georgia. The funeral will be Thursday, September 15th at 11am at Orange United Methodist Church in Canton, with Rev. Nathaniel Long officiating, visitation to begin at 10am. Interment will follow where she will join Murrel at Georgia National Cemetery at 1:30pm.
Esta is survived by a large family including her son and daughter-in-law, David and Marne Brian of Milton, GA, her daughter, Lisa Carol Brian of Cumming, GA, her brother Wiley Thomas Higgins, Jr. and his wife Helen Higgins of Cumming, GA, her son-in-law, Gary Walens of Collegeville, PA, six grandchildren: Lauren Walens, Andrea Walens, Rachel Brian, William Brian, Grace Brian, and Michael Brian, nieces and nephews including Rosemary Higgins of Douglasville, GA, Lisa Ellen Davies of Grass Valley, CA, Dina Webber of Yuba City, CA, and Tom Davies of Salem, OR, and numerous Higgins and Patterson cousins.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in her memory to the American Cancer Society.