Eleanor H. Hilsman

We are saddened to announce that our mother, Eleanor Hilsman, passed away peacefully on June 11, 2019, surrounded by her family.  Our mother was a loving and devoted mother, wife, and grandmother.

Mom lived a long and full life and cherished all of it: her loved ones, all the people she met, and all the wonderful experiences she had.  She was born on August 30, 1923 in Baltimore and grew up there and in Sparrows Point, living with her parents Nell and Ebby Hoyt and her older sister Mary Katherine.  Our mother came of age during the great depression and the horror of World War II. Despite the hardships of the depression, Mom was always sunny and positive.  She always taught us to look for the best in people, and she always saw the best in people. Mom loved her native city of Baltimore.  As  a girl she worked at the local library to help support the family and her lifelong love of books began then.

Eleanor enjoyed learning about almost everything and after graduating from high school in Baltimore, she earned a full scholarship to Barnard College. She began at Barnard in 1941, as war was breaking out all over the world.  In 1942, she left school to help the war effort by joining the workforce along with millions of other women.  She became a draftsman at Martins aircraft factory building airplanes for the war effort.

Before the war, when Eleanor was only 16, she met a young man whose father was temporarily stationed in Baltimore.  His name was Roger Hilsman and he was a friend of then boyfriend. They would go on double dates--Roger with another girl and Eleanor with her boyfriend.  Roger and Eleanor became friends during those times and enjoyed talking about a wide range of topics.  They shared a love of knowledge.  For example, they were both thrilled to learn that “not all snails are vegetarians” and these words became the signature phrase for their shared love of learning so central to their relationship.  Over the next several years, Roger attended West Point and in June of 1943, Roger invited Eleanor up for “June week” as his girl, where they enjoyed their first kiss on the balcony of Collum Hall.

Once he was deployed to Burma, Roger and Eleanor wrote many letters to each other about the war and their thoughts about life.  As they continued to correspond, it was clear to Roger that Eleanor was the one for him.  Once the war ended, Eleanor went back to college but this time at the University of Chicago.  Roger visited her in Chicago many times and their love for each other grew.  When Roger proposed marriage, Eleanor happily accepted.

They were married in 1946 in Baltimore.  Because there was no silk available after the war, and at the time parachutes were made out of silk, Eleanor’s wedding dress was made from Roger’s wartime parachute--perfect ivory colored silk.  Her youngest daughter Sarah wore the same dress for her wedding 45 years later.

As she felt she should in those days, Eleanor left school once Roger proposed, but finishing college never left her thoughts.  Roger was still in the military but they sent him to Yale to get a PhD. The couple lived in Milford, Connecticut near New Haven while Roger finished his PhD.  In 1948, their first child Hoyt was born and Eleanor chose to participate in a study conducted by Yale on new phenomena called “natural childbirth” and “breastfeeding”--two concepts that had been shunned by the medical system in the U.S. for some time.

After Yale, they moved to England where Roger was stationed and their second child Amy was born.  Eleanor loved living in England and then Germany, but she urged Roger to consider a career beyond the military and was pleased when he resigned from active duty.  They then moved to Princeton where Roger taught briefly, and then to Washington D.C., where he worked in the Library of Congress and then the State Department during the Kennedy administration.  Ashby and Sarah were born during those Washington years.

Eleanor loved the political life.  She was curious about everything and loved meeting all the interesting people.  She was intimidated by being in such a circle of politicos, but she rose to the occasion, hosting Washington dinners and attending all the parties with Roger. Eleanor also cultivated her own interests such as becoming very involved in the League of Women Voters while in Washington D.C.

After Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963, Roger left the State Department in protest of Johnson’s expansion of the war in Viet Nam and the family moved to New York City, where Roger became a full professor of political science at Columbia University.  Their lives settled down to an academic pace, and Eleanor returned to her dream of finishing college.  She enrolled in Columbia University’s School of General Studies and earned her bachelor’s degree in the early 70’s in Anthropology.

Eleanor loved New York City.  During those years, she volunteered at the American Museum of Natural History, and later worked at the Anglo-American school, where she helped them set up their first computer lab in the late 1980s.

Over their lifetime together, Eleanor and Roger took many trips all over the world. Eleanor delighted in experiencing different places and was enchanted with these different parts of the world. In addition to visiting many European countries, they also traveled to Russia, China, India, Vietnam, Burma, Australia, and many countries in South America.

In the 1970s, the family decided to live year-round in what had been their summer home in Lyme Connecticut, so that Ashby and Sarah could complete elementary and high school in that quieter, more rural area.  While in Connecticut, Eleanor wanted to work, and she was especially drawn to the excellent Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut.  The Mystic Seaport staff appreciated Eleanor’s intellectual curiosity and her rigorous work ethic.  She worked there as a docent and also ran a survey for them where she interviewed visitors and then crunched the numbers using a main frame at the University of Connecticut that took up an entire room.  She had to create a punch card for every survey answered and feed the punch cards into the computer.  In her own way, Eleanor was very involved with the birth of the computer age.

In Lyme, Eleanor was involved with the town in various ways.  She helped the group of women who would plan the Hamburg Fair every year.  Together Roger and Eleanor were very involved in the local democratic committee and they would host fundraisers and got involved in various campaigns.  Eleanor developed many friends over the years and dearly loved and was loved by the community.

Also while in Lyme, Eleanor enjoyed all the visits with grandchildren that began after her first grandchild, Joe, was born in 1982.  Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, visits with grandchildren were a joy for Eleanor and she was always finding fun activities to share with them.  The grandchildren would enjoy riding in the tractor with granddaddy, going for boat rides, swimming at the beach, and attending the Hamburg Fair.  “Melly” to her grandchildren, Eleanor would create homemade play dough, help them create spaghetti pictures, sing together, and read stories.

Unfortunately, Eleanor began suffering significant health issues in her 70s.  This struck her early, and changed her life.  The first few years of adjusting were rough but in true Eleanor fashion, she quickly adjusted and rose to the occasion with grace.  She retained her interest in people, her curiosity about the world, and her enjoyment of the rich moments of life.  Eleanor continued to enjoy her friends and family, meeting new people and asking them about their lives, and enjoying the interesting conversations.  She also continued to very much enjoy her grandchildren during these years, continuing to make their visits great fun.

Shortly before Roger died in 2014, Roger and Eleanor moved to Bridges Cornell Heights in Ithaca, New York.  After Roger died, Eleanor enjoyed five good years at Bridges.  She loved the social atmosphere and the many activities and she had many wonderful visits with family while she was there. Throughout her time there, the Bridges staff provided wonderful loving care for Eleanor. During the final several months of her life, staff of both Bridges and Hospicare of Ithaca were kind and supportive to the family as we all attended our mom.  We are very grateful for their care.

She is survived by her four children: Hoyt, Amy, Ashby, and Sarah, and their respective spouses and partners: Nancy, Graciela, Nelly, and Louis, her six grandchildren: Joe, Patrick, Michael, William, Christina, and Sophia, and her two great-granddaughters: Cora and Amelia. She was preceded in death by her spouse, Roger Hilsman Jr., who died February 23, 2014.

Our mother will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  A time for the service has not yet been scheduled.

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