Mizuho Llewellyn, intrigued by mysteries and accounting, By Kay Powell

Mizuho Llewellyn perched on a scooter near rice fields in Taiwan for this 1994 photo. She met her husband at UGA. 'She was the smartest girl in the class,' he says.

Published on: Thursday 02/07/08 , Page D7 of the Metro Section

Mizuho Llewellyn
News Obituary Article

ATLANTA: Mizuho Llewellyn, intrigued by mysteries and accounting

By Kay Powell, kpowell@ajc.com;

Mizuho Llewellyn's passion for reading Nancy Drew mysteries and studying anthropology and accounting had a common thread: gathering data to arrive at a solution.
"In anthropology, you start with dirt and uncover something," said her husband, Jim Llewellyn, of Atlanta. In accounting, numbers lead to a conclusion, and in mysteries, the proper analysis of facts leads to solving a crime.
Usually.
"I gave her a mystery book you have to read and then do a jigsaw puzzle that tells who did it," said her friend Chriseda Howard of Decatur. "It drove her crazy. That was an experiment on my part. I never did it again."
The memorial service for Mrs. Llewellyn, 36, of Atlanta will be 11 a.m. Saturday at H.M. Patterson & Son, Oglethorpe Hill. She died of lung cancer Sunday at Hospice Atlanta.
A nonsmoker who gave birth to her first child in October 2006, Mrs. Llewellyn had been a senior auditor at Ernst & Young before joining the Federal Home Loan Bank as an accounting policy analyst in June, her husband said. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in August.
She came to the U.S. in 1990 to attend Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, an experience that deepened her knowledge of American life beyond what she had read in books.
"She told me what they did on weekends was get in the back of a pickup truck and drink Budweiser," Mr. Llewellyn said. Transferring to the University of Georgia to earn her anthropology degree, she met her husband in 1991, when he asked her to tutor him in their Chinese class.
"She was the only girl there who laughed at all my jokes," he said. "She was the smartest girl in the class."
They married in Ageo, Japan, in October 1995, and had lived in Taiwan before moving to Atlanta. She worked full time, took night classes at Georgia State University and graduated summa cum laude with a master's degree in accounting.
One summer term at UGA, Mrs. Llewellyn headed to Taiwan. Mrs. Howard teased her new classmate: "You won't be here for my birthday in August, so you better bring me back a nice gift. Darn if she didn't come back with a nice gift."
"She was the embodiment of polite," Mrs. Howard said. "If you did a kindness for her, she couldn't rest until she repaid the kindness. She was exceedingly polite even by Japanese standards."
Mrs. Llewellyn didn't cook, ate out frequently and when she craved native food headed for Hashiguchi Japanese Restaurant in Marietta. Her work was stressful and her respite was sleep, Mrs. Howard said.
"She was incredibly bright, but on her down time, she wanted it to be her down time," she said. "Sleeping was her fun. It sounds crazy, but I never met anyone who slept as much as Mizuho, maybe because her brain was so active otherwise."
Her husband said, "Mizuho was one of those people who was pure of thought. There was an innocence to her. She had a pureness of thought that everyone else sort of lost when we were 14. Mizuho never lost it."
Other survivors include a son, Kai Llewellyn of Atlanta; her parents, Kazuji and Satoko Suwa of Ageo; and a brother, Takeaki Suwa of Ageo.

� 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thrusday, 2/7/2008.