06/02/2001
Lela Cleo (Bellamy) Brillhart was born March 31, 1910, in Knoxville, Iowa, to Cleo H. and Eva Blanche Bellamy. She worked for Santa Fe Railway in Chanute.
She graduated from Lewis Hotels Training School and then was an assistant auditor at the Jayhawk Hotel in Topeka in the 1940s. She later was a legal secretary for attorneys in Arkansas City before she retired in 1968.
She was a member of Countryside United Methodist Church, where she sang in the choir. She was a patron of the Topeka Symphony Society, a member of the Santa Fe Ladies Club, and had been a volunteer at the information desk at Memorial Hospital.
She was a member of the Nine-Hole Team Play Sixsome at Topeka Public Golf Course.
She married Jerome W. Brillhart on Oct. 19, 1929. He died on Jan. 18, 1986, of a stroke. An infant son died in 1932.
Survivors include a son, Jerome B. Brillhart, Austin, Texas; a sister, Ruth Neal, Knoxville, Iowa; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Lela Cleo Brillhart, 91, Topeka, died Saturday, June 2, 2001, at a Topeka retirement center.
Services will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Countryside United Methodist Church. The burial will be in Mount Hope Cemetery. Mrs. Brillhart will lie in state afternoon today at Penwell-Gabel Mid-Town Funeral Home.
Memorial contributions may be made to the choir fund at Countryside United Methodist Church, 3221 S.W. Burlingame Road, 66611; or the Washburn University Student Endowment Fund, 1700 S.W. College, 66621