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Sharon Kolor uploaded photo(s)
Sunday, May 1, 2022
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Elsie. A woman like no other. She exuded optimism and positive vibes. She was the cornerstone of the Democratic Women's Club of Indian River and the Democrats of Indian River longer than most people remained involved. She was a leader who was so worth following. She was a Living Legacy. She pioneered Planned Parenthood for all the right reasons. She and her contemporaries bought a building on Route 60 in Vero Beach and gifted it to Planned Parenthood long before my time. Elsie told great stories of her years teaching in New York City schools. I wish I could have watched her in action! She loved her husband and spoke of him often. I wish I could have met him. Elsie had what Harvard Professor, Harold Gardner called Interpersonal Intelligence. I call it social intelligence. She understood people so well. It made her a great teacher, leader, role model, organizer, activist. People paid attention to Elsie and she influenced so many of us. And Elsie was strong. I remember her attending important community meetings when she had lost much of her hearing. I now have some hearing loss and know how hard it is to remain engaged. But nothing stopped Elsie - even when she moved to St. Petersburg where she was still gathering people and enriching their lives. So many of Elsie's contemporaries passed on before her. If only they were here to add their tributes! Elsie lived a remarkable life. It was an honor and a gift to have shared some of her life with her.
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Christine Barker Posted May 25, 2022 at 5:06 PM
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Corry Westbrook uploaded photo(s)
Sunday, April 10, 2022
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Elsie was an extraordinary person. She was a strong supporter of my campaign and went head-to-head with an annoying stalker. She seemed to never back down from a noble fight - be it for women equality and empowerment, protecting the environment and democracy. She was a cool woman and left her mark on the world. She was fun to be around. She will be missed. May she rest in peace.
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Betsy Nelsen posted a condolence
Saturday, April 9, 2022
In 2004, we moved to Heron Cay and became next door neighbors to Elsie and Jonathan.What wonderful memories we have of those years- sharing a glass of wine with Elsie as she spoke of her passions. The time I was away and she was dressing for a political function and ran next door to have Jerry zip up her little black dress!! We think of her often and will continue to be inspired by her.
Betsy and Jerry Nelsen
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Christine Barker Posted May 25, 2022 at 5:10 PM
Thanks Betsy, for your wonderful remembrances of my mom! You and Jerry were wonderful neighbors to my parents. They appreciated you both so much. And yes, I can just picture my mom running next door to get Jerry to help her with the dress so she would be well dressed and not late for her next event!
Thanks again from Elsie's daughter, Christine Barker
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Nancy Stiefel posted a condolence
Thursday, April 7, 2022
The world has lost a tireless worker for social justice and women's equality. We knew Elsie and Jon through the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Vero Beach,Florida. She was great fun as well as a serious-minded worker. She will be missed!
Nancy and Jack Stiefel
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Josie Lieberman lit a candle
Thursday, April 7, 2022
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I met Elsie while getting involved with our Indian River County Democrats. She was an amazing woman and she will be missed by
many.
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Robin posted a condolence
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Once upon a time there was a fierce, scrawny, brilliantly clever little girl raised in the dire poverty of the Great Depression as the fourth, unwanted, daughter, to immigrant parents. Elsie Rublowsky was born in 1926 in Pennsylvania in the Portland Allentown Cement Company town. When the plant closed after the stock market crash of 1929, the family migrated to New York City. They moved among the cold-water flats of the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side because often they couldn’t pay the rent. The family spoke Polish and Ukrainian at home, but sharp little Elsie quickly mastered English in school, found champions in her teachers, and won academic honors. Resourceful and lovable, she found friendship, support, and nourishment, among neighbors and classmates. Her Italian friend’s mama made her spaghetti. Her Jewish friends’ mamas reinforced her love of learning. Families as poor as hers offered her hand-me-down clothes. One friend’s family had a radio and she listened, rapt, to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.
Elsie went to work at 12 while studying her way to an academic high school diploma. Her teenage jobs included the candy counter at the Times Square Woolworths (using her older sister’s working papers), and a pillow factory. Her wartime jobs were at Baldwin locomotive works, where they made tank parts, and Sun Oil, where she tested petroleum for viscosity, boiling point, and flash point, as she recounted. After the wartime factory workers went on strike for higher wages, she used her back pay for tuition at Temple University. She managed 1 ½ semesters of a nursing course before economic circumstances forced her back to help her family, now living in the Bronx. Refusing to learn typing and shorthand, she aced the placement tests at Matheson Olin chemical company and the Lever Brothers for jobs few other women qualified for.
One evening, her brother brought home a friend from Columbia University, Jonathan Post Visel: a tall, dark, handsome prince in Elsie’s eyes. Within six months they were married. Jon, a Marine Corps veteran, introduced Elsie to the upper-class bi-coastal world of his family, whereas she expanded his horizons. They left both their families behind for a new life in California. Elsie worked for the Veterans Administration in San Francisco, on an early computer prototype operated by heavy lead plates and punch cards. Jon worked for the San Francisco Examiner. San Francisco in the early 50s was one of her happiest times. They dined in the cheap Italian restaurants of North Beach, and frequented bohemian bars and nightclubs with a glamorous crowd of young couples. There she had her two daughters and became a stay-at-home mother for several years, with happy memories of taking her children to Golden Gate Park.
The family moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1961. Elsie studied at Brooklyn College, completing a B.A. and M.A. in Education. Her daughters learned to prepare the miracle foods of the 1960s: TV dinners, minute rice, and that San Francisco treat: rice-a-roni. Elsie, who could have been a rocket scientist, took her elementary teaching job, if not to the moon, then to the heights of graduate degrees and advanced certifications, introducing computers and bilingual education to the children of the New York projects and tenements, with whose aspirations she identified. Later, in Indian River County, she taught GED math to young offenders, whose need for education she also identified with, even if their interest in the metric system was, as she used to joke, related to drug-dealing.
In retirement, she threw herself into arts and crafts and theatre and volunteer work, and finally Florida Democratic politics, where she proudly made her mark, as her friends in Vero Beach and St. Petersburg know.
You also know her as do-er, a fighter, a striver, right up to her death, which she chose on her own terms. You know her as a wonderful, enthusiastic and loyal friend. Among her many gifts, she had a gift for cultivating loving friendships, right up until her final, happy years at Westminster Palms. She died at 96, after almost a century of history few of us here have lived through: world history, political history, cultural history, personal history. Her story has ended, but like all great historical figures and brave heroines, she will continue to inspire us.
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The family of Elsie Visel uploaded a photo
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
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