Elizabeth C. Ely is no longer walking on this earth today

written on 8/24/2009

Elizabeth Ely passed on yesterday. A person who was key in my life. The longtime principal of The Field School, the high school I graduated from.

I went to The Field School 10th through 12th grade. I spent freshman year in another school that didn’t work well for me, and due to my dyslexic reading challenges and the growing problems in DC public schools, my parents did not want to send me back.

The original Field school was in a large house in Washington, DC. When we arrived there, I told my parents I wanted to meet the principal on my own. I went in and sat down to talk to Elizabeth, and though I don’t remember what we talked about, I remember how she was truly interested in me and why I wanted to go The Field School. I remember asking a lot of questions since I wanted to be at the right place--like an adult two-way interview. I came out and told my mother, “I discussed it with Elizabeth and we decided that I am going to school here.” I still had challenges reading but I also had to compete and do my homework. If it required reading many books, I had to come up with some approved equivalent work.

Those three years at the Field School were my most productive school years, thanks to Elizabeth. She created a space for me to freely explore and create. I started the first yearbook that the school ever had (The Falcon), won a photo contest and participated in a formal debate on global warming and what the rising level of CO2 meant. Our debate team won the debate that Global Warming was real and a future concern in 1978.

With Elizabeth’s prompting, I submitted myself to a National Science Foundation scholarship and won, going to Ball State University for a program to learn about digital electronics, acoustics and holography. I came back and wrote a 115-page book on holography over the summer and was allowed to teach a class on how to make holograms, and we made real holograms. I remember falling in love with Geometry as Elizabeth taught it, sharing the concept of the golden triangle and unique history of Pythagoras. I did advanced reports and a presentation on Einstein, and how Japanese Americans lost everything in WWII in concentration camps, a talk which included bringing in a woman who had been in such a camp to share her story.

Not sure about college due to low SAT scores (lots of reading), I considered the military. Elizabeth’s daughter (Sharaine Ely), who was a teacher, locked me in a room and said we were gong to talk until she was sure that I was not just choosing the Army because of my fear of higher education with my reading challenges. She was right, and I chose to go on to college.

My friendship with Elizabeth continued long beyond graduation. We would meet every few years or so and check in. She celebrated my graduation from college and my completing my first 395-page book. She would come to me for advice and I did the same with her. The last 7 years I felt more and more strongly that she needed to write her own book. I remember many conversations about it. She cared so deeply about the effect the book would have on other people in the best of ways. I remember a heated debate (which we loved) where I insisted that it did not have to be perfect, that people even needed to see the errors and her perceived mistakes. She told me that my own self-revealing quality in my book got her to understand more my point. Over the years she would share more and more what it was like for her during her years in education: her determination, fears that she hadn’t made the best decision, how she learned from her mistakes, but not always, and the process of making decisions.

Clearly Elizabeth was academically smarter than the average person. That had little to do with her greatness. To me, the extraordinariness of Elizabeth Ely was how she truly had not more or less then the rest of us. She fought to overcome regrets and mistakes like many of us. Her greatness was how courageously she lived her life, determined to keep her mind open to possibility but her feet grounded in the realities of life’s challenges. She was neither reckless nor overly protective. Like the father who lets his child climb the tree but stops them when he knows they would break more than just an arm if they fell. It is that edge that let me take on things I may not have otherwise taken on and I give Elizabeth great credit for inspiring this in me. There are thousands of us out here whose lives would not be as great without Elizabeth, and I am one of them. It is my belief that the greatest way to honor and appreciate Elizabeth Ely’s life is to live our own lives to the fullest.

Elizabeth, it truly hurts that you are gone. The last time we talked months ago was not enough. Thank you for the life you lived because it gave so much to my life. I know you are no longer walking on this earth today, but I know you are still with us.

Martin Brossman
The Field School Graduate
Class of 1978

See Washington Post Obituary about Elizabeth C. Ely.

and

In Memory of Elizabeth C. Ely comments at The Field School website.

A few photos from the first Yearbook refereed to in the post:

Drawing from the first yearbook The Falcon of The Field School 1976

The Falcon - The Field School's first Yearbook - The Falcon


The Falcon ( Yearbook ) Staff - 1976
Sharaine Ely take in 1976 at The Field School from the yearbook

My Holography Class

Another picture of Elizabeth from ~1977/78