Memphis, TN - After a long and rich life, Lillian Dobson Dunavant passed peacefully through her last, beloved sunset on Sunday May 29, 2016 at the age of 84. She was preceded in death by her brothers – Moran, Ezzell, and John Dobson – her parents, Sophie Ezzell and Matt Dobson – and her grandson, Richard Love Fisher Jr. She is survived by her brother, Matthew Dobson of Nashville. By way of her five children – Connie Adams (Lou), Dot Fisher (Dick), Bill Dunavant (Michelle), John Dunavant (Jennifer), and Buck Dunavant (Douglas) - her 16 grandchildren: Galloway and Elizabeth Allbright, William Adams, Hunter Adams, Dottie and Josh French, Bailey and Mike Kirwan, Audsley Dunavant, Hilary Dunavant, Billy Dunavant, Harry Dunavant, Sophie Dunavant, Dobson Dunavant Grayson Dunavant, Stephanie Pierotti, Elizabeth Pierotti, Margaret Pierotti, Buchanan Dunavant, Gardner Dunavant, Mary Wilkes Dunavant, and Lucy Dunavant, and two great-grandchildren, Lillian leaves the world behind her fuller and richer than she found it. She is survived by all of us who survived because of her. We called her Lil. Because she told us to. Lil was born at home in Nashville on February 24, 1932. There she inherited the steel will from her mom, 'Little Mother', that would come to define her life. She spent a charmed, bucolic childhood, much of it on horseback, among the rolling hills south of Nashville. And then as a 19 year old student at Vanderbilt, she met a young man whom she fell in love, and everything changed. Lil married the love of her life, William Buchanan Dunavant Jr. in 1952. Billy and Lillian relocated to his hometown of Memphis, and unwittingly began to build one of the city's great families. Before she knew it, Lil was a matriarch. She raised two girls and three boys to meet the world just as it was and brooked no excuse. She convinced her children that they could and would overcome anything in their way to become whoever each of them needed to be. She served as President of The Little Garden Club, Junior League Garden Club, and the Tuesday Study Club. She was long active in local chapters of the Colonial Dames of America, the Junior League, Les Passees. She was a member of Second Presbyterian Church. Lil loved great parties full of fine people and their families. 4 generations of family friends built decades of memories at her famous Christmas Eve parties. And each grandchild can clock his or her life by their movement up the ranks at those soirees. From the children's tables to the caramel cake and meatballs, the weird old candies, the silver tumblers, the Vidalia onion and green bean casseroles, and the infamous eggnog that handicapped a hundred Christmas mornings. Her great house, where massive trees shade rolling hills in the middle of the city, became a canvas for anything a child's imagination could conjure. Lil's Easter Egg hunts are the stuff of legend. We can't remember Lil without her other great love, Sea Island, GA. Home away from home, her happiest place, where her grandchildren made so many memories these last 50 years. Her perch on the marsh afforded her the two views she loved most, tussled grandchildren tumbling in, spent from a day of play and a blazing sun melting into the marsh, the trees, and the sea beyond, the last light illuminating a timeless unchanging view of her little slice of the world. Lil was as tough as they come. She didn't see the point of changing too much, regardless of how much the world changed on her. She was a constant. She was hilarious, largely without knowing it. She knew your best could be better. Her life had exultation and tragedy, love and heartbreak. She gave us our life. She gave us each other. We will always love you. We always did. Visitation will be 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. Thursday, June 2 in the connector of Second Presbyterian Church. The funeral service will be 1 p.m. in the sanctuary with private burial to follow in Memorial Park Cemetery. The family requests that contributions in Lillian's memory be made to The Little Garden Club, 160 Cherry Road, Memphis, TN 38117 or Memphis Botanic Gardens, 750 Cherry Road, Memphis, TN 38117 or to the charity of donor's choice. Canale Funeral Directors (Published in The Commercial Appeal on June 2, 2016)