Edith Gaylord Muller (1919-2003)

Written by her brother, William Luther Gaylord, Jr., October, 2003:

Edith Gaylord Muller, born in Berkeley, California in 1919 and a long-time resident of Mill Valley, Marin County, California, passed away Friday, Oct. 3 in the Marin Convalescent Hospital where she had been a patient for two weeks.

She was the daughter of the late William L. and Marion P. Gaylord, and spent her childhood in Berkeley, where her family home was destroyed in the Berkeley Fire of 1923, and in St. Helena, Napa County, where she attended elementary and high schools. She graduated from the University of California in 1940 with a degree in Art Instruction and was employed as an art teacher at Atascadero High School. After teaching assignments there and at Napa High School, she was employed by Jo Sinel, a prominent San Francisco designer. Later, she was associated with the Neil Sampson design studio when she met her future husband Stanley Muller, also a graphic designer. They worked together for many years, and were married for 56 years. Both were water-colorists in their spare time.

While raising three children at their Mill Valley home, she taught in the Marin County school system as a home teacher. She did some free-lance writing in recent years, describing the Berkeley Fire, and childhood shopping trips to the Emporium which were published in the Oakland Tribune and the S.F.Chronicle.

She is survived by her husband, Stanley Muller; a daughter, Carolyn Muller of Napa; two sons, Randal Muller of Roseville, his wife Roberta and daughter Halina; Bradley Muller of De Leon Springs, Florida, his partner Lois and children, Rima and Miles. She also leaves a sister, Alice Gaylord Taplin of St. Helena, and a brother, William Gaylord of Sacramento; two nieces and three nephews.

A memorial service will be held at a future time. The family would appreciate a remembrance to the National Cancer Institute, 6130 Executive Blvd. MSC8322, Bethesda, MD 20892-8332

The Writings of Edith Gaylord Muller

In the late 1980s through the early 2000s , my mother, Edith Gaylord Muller (1919-2003) wrote a series of articles for various purposes, including publishing reminiscences in the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, and creating a book for my daughter Halina. She took a writing class at the college of Marin to improve her skills and marketability.

She published one copy of the book for Halina in two installments, in 1995 and 1996. More installments were clearly intended. but never gathered together with the line art she did to illustrate the book. It is obvious to me that the memory problems which plagued her later in her life (from 1997 onward) were already at work, affecting the second installment in 1996.

As far as I know, most of the articles are factual reporting of events and people that she remembered. There are several poems, at least one of which is through her own eyes as a child. I have not found any fiction.

I believe that most, if not all, of the articles were written on several personal computers. The earliest was probably a CPM machine running WordStar, which my dad had gotten from his sister June Bogard. Later my mom migrated (with the assistance of my father Stanley) to Windows 3.1 (still using WordStar) and finally Windows 98 (now using MS Word).

In January, 2007, I decided to look for these files on the long unused computer. I found them, and to my surprise, there were many more than I expected, and almost all of them have answered genealogical and historical questions that I have been regretting not asking my mom before she died.

I have since copied the files to multiple, more modern computers, and have worked to convert them from WordStar format into MS Word. It's not hard, just tedious.

It was my desire to publish them immediately, so I began this blog to do so.

It was not until after she died that I began to grasp how talented my mother was. I just took it for granted.

This is for you, mom, and thanks for answering some questions that I didn't possess the wit to ask you when you were alive.