Lasting Memories

Eleanor Wood
Nov. 7, 1918-Sept. 12, 2017
Portola Valley, California

Eleanor Jenkins Wood died peacefully at Stanford Hospital on Tuesday, September 12, 2017. She was 98 years old and had led a full and fortunate life.

Ellie was born Eleanor Cushing Jenkins on November 7, 1918, during the closing days of World War I. Her parents, Jim and Dolly Jenkins, were residents of Mill Valley, California, and Ellie grew up in that town with her sister Sally, her brother Jim Jr., and a host of Marin friends with whom she would remain close throughout her life.

Weekends and summers were often spent at the family’s beach house in Bolinas, where Ellie competed on the tennis court and flirted with beaus on the beach.

Ellie had deep family roots in Marin. A great grandfather, Dr. John J. Cushing, founded the Blithedale resort in Mill Valley in the early 1870s. Another great grandfather, John Oscar Eldridge, built the first road to the top of Mt. Tamalpais (1885). And her grandfather, Sidney B. Cushing, was founding president of the Mill Valley and Mt. Tamalpais Scenic Railway (1896-1909).

Ellie attended public elementary school in Mill Valley and high school at the Katharine Branson School in Ross. She claimed she wasn’t a good student. That said, she had a beautiful contralto voice, and following high school, she studied singing, first in San Francisco and later at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

Although she seldom sang professionally, Ellie often entertained at community events, parties, and family gatherings. Her voice soared above all others whenever the Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America were sung.

Ellie married Parker Wood Jr. on May 9, 1942. World War II was in full swing. Parker was an ensign in the Navy, and Ellie volunteered for the Red Cross. The couple’s first home was on Hyde Street in San Francisco, and from that apartment, Ellie watched Parker’s ships as they left for the Pacific and returned to port.

The couple remained in San Francisco for several years after the war, moving south to Woodside in 1950 to raise their family. They remained active members of the Woodside community for 40 years.

Ellie loved to garden, and she loved the outdoors. She was a longtime member of the Garden Club of America. She was a bonsai enthusiast and a board member for the Saratoga Horticultural Foundation. She was also a docent at Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Ellie and Parker both loved to fish, and they took many fly-fishing vacations throughout the American West.

In 1990, Parker and Ellie moved into the Sequoias retirement center in Portola Valley. Parker died at the Sequoias in 1996, and Ellie remained there until her recent death.

Few know that Ellie lived under a Chinese curse. The morning after she was born, the family cook, Gong Chee Chong, asked whether the new baby was a boy or a girl. Ellie’s father replied that Mrs. Jenkins had had a lovely girl – at which point Chee stormed out of the room and refused to speak to anyone for days. Then one morning, Chee returned to the breakfast table all smiles and announced that he thought it was all right that Mrs. Jenkins had had a girl.

Someday that girl would grow up and have boys. Ellie, in fact, had three boys - and no girls. Her sons – Parker III, Timothy, and Edward – were sources of great pride and perpetual worry for her, and she admonished all three, until her final days, to behave themselves.

Ellie is survived by her three sons, three daughters-in-law, four grandchildren, and six great grandchildren – with a seventh on the way. We miss her – and we promise to behave ourselves.

The family will celebrate Ellie’s life, later this year.