Ann Rhea

RHEA, Ann Boon

Ann Boon Rhea passed peacefully on Thursday, March 20, 2025, from "old age" and late onset dementia. She was 94.

She is survived by her brother, Harry Boon (Karen), his children, Hunter and Ross; her daughter, Wendy Whitacre (Tim) their children: Jack (Nida, their child, Noor) and Lucy; her son Russell's children: Alene, Jim, and Eleanor Rhea; and her second son, Sam Ishak. She was predeceased by daughter, Helen 1959; her parents (Orly) 1962, her husband 1976; son, Russell 2016; and daughter, Lucille 2016.

Elizabeth Ann Boon was born in Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, on December 15,1930, the first child of Harry and Mary (née Mann) Boon. She grew up on Bowling Road, with brother, Harry, a Chow named "Red" and some rabbits. After E. Rivers grammar school and North Fulton high school, she journeyed to Randolph Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, VA, to major in Latin and earn a Phi Beta Kappa key.

After graduation, she taught Latin in Atlanta. In 1953 while visiting her college roommate, Jane Dillard Knight in Columbus, she met and married the new, pediatrician in town, Jim Rhea (who liked to take credit for "saving the school children of Georgia by marrying her").

They lived contentedly on Carter Ave. in Columbus, had friends, had babies: Lucille, Wendy, (Helen) and Russell, book clubs, dinner parties, church, "Wednesday Girls," beehives - a wonderful, happy, multi-faceted, well-rounded life. She played bridge and was active volunteer with a civil rights group and the Jr League. In 1965, they decided Jim would take a pediatric job at ARAMCO's hospital in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, so that they could "Travel and See the World." Their friends were flabbergasted.

In Dhahran, Ann thrived: she learned Arabic, she embraced the Arab culture, she was a Welcome Lady, a Girl Scout leader, a Sunday school teacher, a square dancer. She taught Middle East studies at the ARAMCO junior high school, she organized and led countless bus field-trips to Hofuf to explore the 'suq' and watch artisans spin pots from cave clay and weave baskets from palm fronds. There were frequent camping trips to the desert to see comets/shooting stars and to go "pot-picking" (looking for pots, coins, bracelet pieces, carnelian beads, arrowheads from the ancient civilizations on the desert surface). Once Lucille, Wendy, and Russell went off to school, she increased her travel within and around Arabia, visiting the Rub' al Khali desert, Mada'in Salah, Riyadh, Jiddah, Beirut, Byblos, Tyre, and Bahrain. The highlight of this time were her trips to the Camel Races in Sakakah. She was lucky enough to find traveling companions to accompany her while Jim was working.

After Jim's death in 1976, Ann returned to Atlanta. She settled into her little house on East Brookhaven, decorating it in full Arab style; doors, stained glass windows, brass, chests, rugs, Bedouin tent dividers, the works. Briefly, Bud-the-dog joined her there along with four goats "to eat the poison ivy," but eventually, the wanderlust won out over pets. In between trips, she loved to host get togethers with old and new friends, and often an international (Arab) student or two. Her cuisine style was a fusion of Southern, Middle Eastern, edible native plants, and at least one super-healthy, awful tasting ingredient.

In Atlanta, she enjoyed the Wild Edible Group, the Center for Puppetry Arts, attending many Bread & Puppet performances; she joined the Botanical Gardens, a Rolls Royce Rally club (more trips), the First Presbyterian Church. An early environmentalist, she celebrated Earth Day and was an avid recycler. She liked the Symphony, even though she was tone deaf, appreciated the High Museum, but most of all loved Storytelling, anywhere; but especially at the festivals in Jonesboro, TN, and LaGrange. She participated in Donald Davis' storytelling retreat on Ocracoke Island several times.

Travel and trip planning were a constant source of pleasure. From her headquarters in Atlanta, she revisited Arabia a few times, once working as a nanny in Riyadh, sleeping on the floor with the rest of the help in their quarters. She loved antiquities, loved ruins, and would seek them out, even if they were in war torn Libya, Turkey, and Syria. She considered herself an avid (armchair) archeologist, an authority on everything old (Roman Empire and older).

She was a voracious reader: fiction, nonfiction, poems, plays, biographies, mysteries, histories. She kept a record of all the books she read in a year, with the goal of reading "more than her age" which she did accomplish for many years. "Cornucopia," "The Oldie,""Archeology," were a few of her longtime, beloved magazine subscriptions.

In 2010, at 80, she stunned her family and friends, by giving away her car and selling her house in Brookhaven, to move to a condo in far away Decatur, where she could 'walk everywhere.' She made new friends at her condo and at Oakhurst Presbyterian church, and thoroughly enjoyed the 'walkability' of Decatur. She was a docent at Fernbank, and Carlos Museum. She belonged to "Bridges across Atlanta." She mastered MARTA, the bus schedules, ancestry.com, and Uber rides, with only a few errant pocket dial summons. Her community garden plot behind the library was non-traditional, with heavy emphasis on lambsquarters, her favorite edible weed, and orange coreopsis (to source the seeds she needed to 'beautify the many barren spots' of Decatur.) Frequent trips to the Dekalb Farmers Market provided quick fixes in between her bigger trips: Saudi Arabia again, Cyprus, Jordan, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Galapagos, Turkey, England. She was always planning her next trip. Malta was next.

The Covid isolation was tough on Ann. Reluctantly, she moved to Maine in 2022 to be closer to family. Even though she did see more family, more frequently; ultimately, the world traveler chose to return to Decatur for her final years. Many people made this transition easy for her; Sam Ishak, Robin Luttrell, her friends at church and the condo, her old Atlanta friends, and some new friends, too, Emily Wright, and Holly Neckerman.

A service to celebrate her long, well-lived, well-traveled life is being planned for the future.

In lieu of flowers, please send a donation to: FugeesFamily.org; ANERA.org (American Near East Refugee Aid); your local Public Library; or Travel and See the World.