Elynor Ruth Zimmerman

She was born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Pierre, South Dakota as a surprise to Ray E. and Ruth M. Noble on October 18, 1930, only three months after her mother’s doctor told her she should have surgery for a tumor because her parents were 41 and 37 years old and pregnancy was completely unexpected. She was named by her sister. She was baptized and confirmed as a youth in a Norwegian Lutheran Church, and later confirmed and married in an Episcopal Church, all in South Dakota.

She was raised on the prairie in Nowlin, South Dakota and shared many stories with her children and grandchildren about her life there, including tales of gypsies, her pet Badger, "Fuzzy", cutting ice on the river during the winter in order to have refrigeration during the heat of summer, hauling water, learning as she watched and helped her mother prepare large vats of home canned foods for her restaurant called "The Squaw Cooler" during the depression of the 30’s, and convincing her father to part with spare change so she could buy an ice cream cone. Elynor provided loving end of life care for both of her parents.

Her phenomenal ability to cook and bake certainly started from that early training by her mother using rudimentary tools available at that time. Her cooking will be most greatly missed for her irreplaceable, un-duplicatable, best in the nation, secret family recipe, eat-the-whole-thing lemon meringue pie.

 Although she never had any formal music lessons, she learned to play the piano by ear and sang beautifully. During the 40’s, she played the piano and sang in a band together with her sister, Margaret, and brother, John, and several other musicians for dances around the region. She was feisty even then and protected her older sister from the molestation threat of drunken men. (She told her daughters about her giving a right hook to a man while wearing a large eagle ring leaving the poor fellow with a bloody wound on his forehead, to which he replied, "If you wasn’t a Lady, I’d hit you." She thought but never said aloud, "If I WAS a Lady, I wouldn’t have hit you!" The fellow left her sister alone.)

She graduated from Philip High School in 1947 while living with her sister and brother-in-law who were teachers there. It was while living in Philip that she became best friends with Hazel Zimmerman, a classmate, and the youngest sister of her future husband.

Ward and Elynor first met at a fudge making party when Ward was home on military leave. From that moment, they both had eyes for each other, and courted by mail while he continued his Naval Service. They eventually married on June 17, 1948 at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Rapid City, South Dakota. Their first disagreement occurred at the wedding as they argued whether to leave by walking down the aisle, or go out the side door to avoid a mud puddle in front of the church. Being Norwegian, Elynor won that argument: they walked down the aisle. They were married 63 years, 7 months, and 8 days.

Before they married, she attended Black Hills Teachers College (now known as Black Hills State University) in 1947 and 1948, as well as a summer session at Eastern Michigan University. She earned a teaching certificate which allowed her to teach in a rural one-room school house. She taught children from 1st to 8th grade. Besides preparing teaching plans and tests for all the grade levels, in a school with no electricity or running water, she used kerosene lamps, and maintained the fire in the wood stove (breaking up huge blocks of Lignite coal to fit in the stove), taught the children, and even cooked lunch (usually soup) for the kids on the propane stove, cleaned the "biffy" (the outhouse), and pulled drinking and wash water from a cistern one bucket-full at a time with a rope. Her classes included special music programs which included all the kids in all the grades. She taught in rural schools in South Dakota with similar facilities until she moved with her three young children to Seattle, Washington in 1954 after Ward had already started working at Boeing several months prior. She never forgot the names of her students and missed teaching very much. Washington State did not recognize the South Dakota Teaching Certificate.

Nevertheless, her expertise in early childhood education and love of children was an asset to all the children who lived in her home whom she taught and tutored. Neighbor children would often assemble in the home after school where Mrs. Zimmerman would read stories, a chapter or two a day, from novels such as White Fang, or Charlotte’s Web. Kids would come daily for their dose of the story and eat some homemade snacks and cookies, then go play outside until dark. Elynor was a second mother to many neighborhood children who had working Moms.

Her love of God and teaching blended perfectly as she helped a neighbor run the "Good News Club," a neighborhood club for children to learn stories from the Bible, sing songs, and learn to pray. Some of those same songs learned in that childhood club were sung to her by her children as she gently slipped into her eternal rest. Both her children and husband appreciate her conviction to her faith as an example that encouraged them to be like minded. One song from that program is how she lived her life:

"Jesus, and Others, and You. 
What a wonderful way to spell "JOY!" 
"Jesus, and Others, and You, 
In the life of each girl and each boy. 
J is for Jesus, you give Him first place, 
O is for others you meet face to face;
Y is for you in whatever you do. 
Put yourself LAST and spell JOY" 


She was always more concerned about the comfort of others than she was for herself.

She was active in PTA and was a Cub Scouts den mother. She volunteered as a Teacher’s aide in elementary schools for many years, long after her own children and grandchildren had moved on to higher grade levels.

She was so very fond of nurturing children that she became a licensed foster parent, from infants to teen agers starting in 1967. Over the years, she had 26 different foster children, many of whom still consider her their "Mom." Three were legally adopted into the family: two by Elynor and her husband, and one by her daughter, Ruth to become her grandchild. She carefully logged each child’s name into her record book and remembered each one’s name and birthday, when they came into her home and when they left. She had a very large picture frame in her home filled with pictures of each child who had ever lived there. She prayed for each of them long after they left. On some of their many cross country car trips, she would stop and visit them if she knew where they lived. She cared deeply about each one. Her love was unending.

She was very active in church activities and was the children’s choir director and accompanist for St. Timothy’ Children’s Chapel at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Renton for many years.

She was active with the Washington State and National Foster Parent Associations and served as a delegate representing Washington State at an International Foster Parent convention in Boston. She advocated strongly that foster parents needed to unite to strengthen their ability to get the services that were needed for foster children, including counseling, medical and dental coverage and personal needs.

She later became the Director of the Western Washington State Foster Parent Resource Center which provided, among other things, emergency supplies to foster parents who received children without clothes, toys, and other necessities, and assisted them in locating other services needed for their foster children. Among other things, she established a clothing bank and personally washed and folded the recycled clothing and sorted it according to size. She organized monthly meetings of foster parents that included a pot-luck dinner and speakers who provided additional information and training. She testified before the State Legislature on several occasions to justify continued or increased funding for foster parents that more accurately reimbursed them for the expenses of raising the children. She was tireless in her advocacy for those children who were otherwise lost in society.

She was a master typist, and could maintain 60 words per minute or better without mistakes on an Underwood mechanical typewriter. She often worked typing documents for others. Her typing ability and spell checking accuracy puts today’s word processing to shame. She never had much use for computers as her first experiences were unpleasant. She easily out-typed the capacity of the early machines which caused many typographical errors. "I do not make mistakes", she exclaimed. She resisted the technology thereafter.

She received many awards and thank you recognitions over the years. But the highest honor for which she was recognized and deeply humbled was to be chosen as the 1983 recipient of the Washington State Jefferson Award. It is an award for volunteering which was started by Jacqueline Kennedy, who wanted to reward the personal work and sacrifice of people who, in their own community, were reaching out to others in need. The Jefferson Award was reported in the newspaper as an equal to receiving the Nobel prize. She later learned that she was nominated by a dear friend, Elinor Meeker, who had secretly gathered the information required for the submittal. Elynor did not feel qualified to be a contestant since she was "just doing ‘minor’ things." In her own words, describing the honor:

"These activities were so rewarding and interesting that I did not think of

them as volunteering. I was following a deep desire to make our world a

better place for children, assuring that they could have a life that

would put them on the successful route. As foster parents we were to

give them "building blocks" and be content that we probably would never

see the end results. But we could be important to get them started."

The governor of Washington at that time, John Spellman, then invited her to Olympia, introduced her on the floor of the Legislature and issued a declaration that she was an "Outstanding Volunteer." That honor was followed by a reception in her honor at the Governor’s mansion. She was given a tour of the private quarters of the mansion by Mrs. Spellman, which was not planned but was enjoyed and appreciated immensely.

She is known by her many friends and family for her helpfulness, kindness, caring, unconditional love and generosity. More than anything, she wanted her death to be a witness to others that death should not be feared, but that it is a fulfillment of God’s love and all of His promises; that we have Eternal Life when we give our lives to Him through Jesus. She hoped that by her own example of peace at the time of death, others would be comforted and have courage in their own situation facing illness and death.

Her life was well stated by her comments in a note she left for us:

"I am thankful that I was allowed to be of help to others. I pray that God will help me, so if ever there is something else I can do, I will respond to the call."

Let this be our call to pay it forward.