Friends will remember Ellen J. Elliott, a community activist and leader in the drive to integrate education on the Midpeninsula, at a memorial service Thursday, April 12, at 11 a.m. at the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church at 950 Santa Cruz Ave.
Ms. Elliott died peacefully at her San Francisco home March 9, surrounded by her family, after a six-year struggle with intestinal cancer. She was 73.
When Ms. Elliott lived in Atherton in the 1970s and 1980s, she was a major force in the struggle for integrated education and the educational efforts of the League of Women Voters. She was a plaintiff in the “Tinsley case,” which resulted in a program that still allows students from the Ravenswood School District to attend elementary schools in the five neighboring school districts, which are primarily white.
“The breadth of her activities was amazing,” said fellow League of Women Voters stalwart Anne De Carli of Menlo Park.
Ellen Nyhus, daughter of a foreign service officer, was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Buenos Aires and London. She returned to the U.S. for college, and earned a degree in business at the University of Wisconsin in 1954.
She worked in management positions in market research in Toronto, New York, and eventually San Francisco, where she was drawn by skiing. She met David Elliott on a blind date; they were married in 1958.
Ms. Elliott continued working for Field Research in San Francisco, until her first child was born. “Thereafter, she combined her leadership role in community service with her role as a homemaker,” her husband wrote in a biography.
The Elliotts’ passion for service soon led them to the Peace Corps. They headed to Sierra Leone in 1964. Later, David was country director in Nigeria from 1964 to 1966, and then headed the Peace Corps’ largest volunteer contingent in India until 1968.
During those years, Ms. Elliott juggled the care of two small children with service to the communities. She taught typing and shorthand in Lagos, and helped a taxi driver start a tour business. In India, she wrote a book on volunteer opportunities in Delhi, helped a women’s cooperative sell handicrafts, and had another baby.
The Elliotts moved to Atherton in 1969, and Ms. Elliott plunged into educational and civic activities. She was a founding member, treasurer and president of the Mid-Peninsula Task Force for Integrated Education, which led the legal fight to gain some level of integration for students in the Ravenswood School District. The “Tinsley suit” was filed in 1976, and settled in 1986.
Another passion over the years was the League of Women Voters. Ms. Elliott was particularly involved in its effort — still ongoing — to reform redistricting in California. She and former supervisor, now county controller, Tom Huening led a statewide drive in 1989 to take redistricting out of the hands of the state Legislature and put it in the hands of an independent commission that would operate in the open.
In 1989, Ms. Elliott was elected to the San Mateo County Women’s Hall of Fame “for extraordinary achievements and contributions.” The citation highlighted her work for multicultural education, her support of the Ecumenical Hunger Program in East Palo Alto, and a message/request service for inmates of the San Mateo County jail, which was handling 28,000 requests each year.
By 1991, the Elliott children were grown, and the Peace Corps called again. The Elliotts sold their Atherton home and spent two years in northeastern Poland, where David helped government agencies and small businesses convert from communism to a market system.
Ms. Elliott helped people who were used to taking orders to organize themselves to solve community problems — a totally new concept. “Everything I learned in the League of Women Voters stood me in good stead,” she told the Almanac in a 1994 interview.
Mr. Elliott recalled that one of Ms. Elliott’s best friends in Poland said of her, “Each day with her was a lesson in how you have to live.”
The Elliotts returned to San Francisco, where Ms. Elliott became active with the League of Women Voters and other civic organizations. There she established televised forums for local political candidates.
Ms. Elliott is also remembered by friends as being warm, efficient, patient and pragmatic. She enjoyed theater, ballet, social tennis, friendly bridge games, books, travel, and morning neighborhood walks with pals, Mr. Elliott recalled.
Ms. Elliott is survived by David, her husband of 48 years; her brother, Paul Nyhus, of Kensington, Maryland; her sister, Margaret Nyhus of New York; two sons, Andrew of Colorado Springs and Fred Elliott-Hart of Boston; a daughter, Karen of Port Townsend, Washington; and seven grandchildren.
The family suggests contributions to the League of Women Voters of California, Education Fund, 8001 12th St., Sacramento, CA 95814; or the National Peace Corps Association, 1900 L St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036.
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