Sometime in the late 1960’s, a group of young Mercer Island teenage boys were lounging together on their bicycles near Island Crest Park, at loose ends about what to do next. “Keith, let’s go talk to your Mom!” one of them said, and none of them thought twice. With Elaine Cochran, it made perfect sense.
Our dear Elaine, teacher, counselor and story teller, the great heart and bright spirit of her family, and their friends, and of countless students in Seattle and Mercer Island schools, died of complications from Alzheimer’s on February 17, 2017.
She was born in Los Angeles on August 7, 1930, to Edson and Muriel Coar, and grew up in Hollywood – which, to a young girl, was definitely tinsel town. It was the heart of the Great Depression, but she’d remember the stars that visited her father’s pharmacy, and the exotic private zoo she’d pass on the way to school. More magic entered her life in 1950, from an arranged phone call mandated by her socially adept relatives. They’d chanced to meet a young navy veteran and architecture student who lived in Seattle and had hitchhiked down the coast teaching ballroom dancing. They pressed Elaine’s number into his hand. Six weeks after meeting her, Don proposed, and a few months later they commenced their 66-year marriage.
Elaine had a deft touch with children. A slight bend at the waist, a touch of the forefinger on her lips and students were rapt. She used her gift throughout our community, in Seattle’s Central District and at Lakeridge Elementary, where she taught Third Grade, and then in an Able Learner’s program. Students never stopped walking up to her, introducing themselves, telling her what they’d remembered from her, grateful for having come under her wing. Elaine was President of the combined Island Park/Lakeridge PTA and active in the Seattle Arboretum, and in the Altar Guild of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, where she was a 60-year parishioner. She directed its Sunday School and adorned its narthex and sanctuary with majestic flower arrangements. Elaine was even a pundit – appearing on a weekly television program in Seattle in the 1960’s. She studied at Cambridge University in her sixties, and late in life worked on the View Point Committee selecting speakers for the Women’s University Club in Seattle.
She had three children, one of whom, her beloved daughter Laura, predeceased her in 1977, having died of a brain tumor at age 20 that was diagnosed at age 13. Elaine bore the burden of those long years of care, cheerfully, heartily, attempting normalcy wherever she could, buying Laura a spunky Yorkshire Terrier, scouring Seattle for food she would eat with all her medications, pushing her out on dates, or to the prom. She is survived by her husband Don, her brother Richard Coar, her sons Robert and Keith, their wives Marlene and Valery, and seven grandchildren.
She’d look out over her children at night, reading tales of the “great gray green greasy Limpopo River” from Rudyard Kipling. She drove a 6 horsepower, front-opening green Isseta that neighbors remember to this day. She taught science not by talking, but by driving her Volkswagen bug up to the side door of her classroom and asking children to shut its air-tight doors. And several of those kids from their bikes in the 60’s still remember their talks with Elaine Cochran, the teacher, and mother, and unforgettable, wonderful soul anyone who knew her will miss. There was only one Elaine. We treasure our memories, feel blessed that we knew her, love her dearly, and feel a giant hole in our hearts as she departs the earth for a better place she so richly deserves.
A memorial service will be held for Elaine on April 8 at 4:00 p.m. at Emmanuel Episcopal Church. Finally, our entire family wishes to acknowledge Covenant Shores, and the devoted and compassionate staff members in both its Reflections and Health Center care units.
Thank you.
