Nashville, TN – Elaine Parker, age 91 of Nashville, passed away at home surrounded by her loving family on October 8, 2021.
Elaine would tell you that she had two great influences: Frank Laubach, who developed the “Each One Teach One” literacy program, and Helen Keller. “Do not let this go to waste” were the words that Helen Keller said to Elaine at her graduation ceremony, when Keller was presented as the first woman to receive an honorary degree and Elaine was the first woman to receive an advanced degree in teaching the blind from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This is an abbreviated version of a very full life. Newspaper clippings have been added to the text published in October 2021 in The Tennessean.
Elaine Marilyn (Goldman) Parker, was born August 6, 1930, in Boston, Massachusetts, daughter of Maurice Goldman (a state Senator in Massachusetts) and Helen Stepansky Goldman Perlman. Elaine was brought up in Boston, where she attended the Boston Latin School. She graduated from Drew Seminary for Young Women in Carmel, New York, where she studied piano and was active in theater.
One of Elaine’s earliest memories was volunteering with her Hungarian-born grandmother in cooking for—and writing to—World War Two servicemen through the Red Cross. Elaine later volunteered with the Boston Veterans Hospital and the New York Lighthouse for the Blind—experiences that contributed to her interest in working with people with vision disabilities.
Elaine first earned a Boston University School of Education degree in Special Education and Counseling, before going on to Harvard. A woman of many interests and passions, she began the first of her many careers teaching in public schools in Waltham and Brookline, Massachusetts. Later, she moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where she taught special education at the Daniel Arthur Rehabilitation School. At the same time, she developed and implemented an adult education program for the blind, founded a Recording for the Blind Program in Oak Ridge, and organized volunteers to bring Talking Books to blind families in the mountains of East Tennessee. Elaine was appointed Chairperson for the East Tennessee Employment of the Handicapped Program created under Governor Frank Clement. In this position, she visited numerous factories and businesses to encourage them to employ people who were blind and people with disabilities.
Instrumental in founding the Talking Book Program for the Blind for the Library for Congress, she took those skills and, when moving from Oak Ridge to Nashville in 1967, opened five adult education programs for the handicapped in Metro Schools.
She extended her work to help inmates at the Tennessee State Penitentiary.
She taught life skills such as shopping and cooking to those with vision disabilities and other disabilities at the Knowles Center for Senior Citizens.
She was then appointed Commissioner for the State of Tennessee Services for the Blind, where she instituted multiple innovative programs and opportunities for those in need of services including setting up a Braille transcribing program at a Nashville synagogue for parents of blind children and for Peabody College students.
In 1971, while still with the State of Tennessee, she founded a summer camp for blind children funded by the B’nai B’rith Maimonides Lodge, which ran for 37 years.
Later projects included the creation of the Low Vision Closet for Jewish Seniors in cooperation with the Jewish Family Service and B’nai B’rith Maimonides Chapter.
Elaine worked full time as a career counselor and taught culinary arts at the Nashville College of Applied Technology (then Nashville Tech), while creating an event planning and wedding business on the side. She opened Weddings by Elan after noticing the need for someone who specialized in wedding planning for couples with disabilities as well as for couples marrying from diverse backgrounds and countries. Not only did she assist in the planning and execution, she also traveled to many exotic places to coordinate wedding ceremonies. She shared her insights in four books:
•Wedding Directing: How to Be a Professional Wedding Director
•Directing Weddings at Hotels: A Training Manual for Staff
•Wedding Directing and Coordinating: A Training Manual with Challenging Stories and Scenarios
•Special Needs Weddings: A Guide for Persons with Visual, Hearing, or Mobility Challenges
Married for 67 years to the love of her life, Frank L. Parker, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University, she accompanied him to over 60 countries where they enjoyed the sights, food, and culture. In their travels, she amassed a collection of wedding figurines from each country, together with menus and cookbooks representative of the local customs, which she used to illustrate her nationally-recognized books.
Elaine wrote or contributed to numerous cookbooks, most recently as project leader for Safe Cooking Made Simple: Easy Recipes for Your Toaster Oven, Slow Cooker, and Microwave, privately published by Jewish Family Service of Nashville. Elaine was working on a book on multi-cultural weddings.
Elaine was a lifelong lover of music and the arts, with season tickets to the symphony, theater, opera and ballet, and attended Broadway shows, events, and lectures whenever the opportunity arose. She learned Braille when she was 13 from an 11 year old blind student at a music conservatory when she was teaching him to play her favorite classical piano piece.
She gave wonderful parties at Cape Cod, being a New Englander at heart. She never lost her Boston accent, even though she moved to Tennessee in 1954. Elaine was an active volunteer, giving her time and expertise to many organizations, and was an inspiration to young women whom she befriended, counseled, and provided emotional support. Her volunteer work was recognized with the Chesed Award from the Jewish Family Service, whose community she touched deeply. Chesed is Hebrew for “loving kindness.” The Chesed Award is bestowed at the Chesed Dinner, JFS’s premier fundraising event where they honor their most dedicated volunteers and supporters while celebrating the work of the agency.
Blessed with four children, Nina (Parker) Ganz, Aaron, Stephan, and David, together with five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren and many loving nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews, Elaine spent considerable time with family and friends including those she called her “adopted” daughters. She put family and friends first at every occasion.
Services to be held at Congregation Micah on Tuesday, October 12, at 11 am. Memorials may be made in honor of Elaine Parker to the Jewish Family Service of Nashville.
Posted online (minus the newspaper clippings) on October 10, 2021
Published (minus the newspaper clippings) in The Tennessean