Obituary: Esther Kuniansky Rawn

Esther Kuniansky Rawn was born in Atlanta Oct. 8, 1927, to Marjorie Bleich and Isidore Kuniansky. She passed away Jan. 22, 2021. She graduated from Girls High School, completed her freshman year of college at the University of Michigan as a teenager, after which marriage and children interrupted her education.

She returned to college after raising three children and, at the age of 48, completed her bachelor of arts in journalism from Georgia State University. Upon graduation, Esther began work for the Visiting Nurse Association, a United Way agency. She was in charge of a program for seniors, as well as creating an in-house newspaper that highlighted the work of board members and employees. She gave public talks on behalf of VNA to the Lions, Elks and garden clubs around Atlanta.

Prior to returning to college at Georgia State, Esther served as president of The Temple Sisterhood; she was a board member of the Fulton County League of Women Voters; and she was president of a B’nai B’rith Women’s chapter that raised money for the visually impaired.

Esther was active in Democratic Party politics. She and her husband, Stan, attended the presidential inauguration of Jimmy Carter in Washington. They were invited to a reception where they met President and Mrs. Carter.

Esther married Stanley Rawn of Brooklyn, N.Y., her first love, when she was 19 and he was 21 and a student at Georgia Tech. They shared 73 wonderful years together, raised three children, traveled the world, enjoyed many close friends and extended family, book clubs and bridge games.

Although active in the community, Esther’s husband and children always came first. She arranged all her community work and her bridge games so that she was always home when her children returned from school, to make sure that they were safe and secure. And if Stan needed her at the laundromat (to help wash Dick Van Dyke’s boxers) that always took priority.

The above is pretty much direct from Esther’s pen at 92 years of age. Also, Esther was an agnostic, which had a very specific meaning for her. She would regularly purchase several boxes of Nabisco Mallomars and hide a couple away in recondite corners of the kitchen cupboards so that her children and her husband and whoever else toward whom she harbored suspicions would not be able to discover and devour them. Invariably, she would forget she had hidden them; sometimes she would find a box several years later and eat them.

She held an unwavering belief that, in heaven, she will find old boxes of Mallomars that have been hidden, perhaps by God, perhaps by no one. It won’t matter to her how they got there, so long as they are there.

The rising dance
of birds of prey above the lake;
winged ends of a diameter of air turning circles on a double helix, bonded by wind,
looking downward, guided by shadows
of one another on ice;
so do we dance,
in this long absence, spun toward the light.

Esther was predeceased by her husband Stanley, who died in August 2020. Surviving Esther are her three children Hugh Rawn (Ann); Michael Rawn (Cynthia) and Marcia Miller (Mark); her grandchildren Ian Rawn, Jeremy Rawn, Amanda Gilbert (Chris), Lauren Miller (Zander) and Jason Miller, Benjamin Rawn and Anna Rawn; and her great grandchild Jacob Brekke.

In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation on Esther’s behalf to The Temple or Weinstein Hospice. There was a Zoom funeral service Jan. 24. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Home, 770-451-4999.

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