Ellen Rowe

The letters home of a Midwestern college girl and teacher would be of little interest to anyone but her family, except that she was an extraordinary person. Ellen Margaret Rowe (rhymes with Wow), 1935-2005, taught Spanish and English when I was a senior at East High School in Akron, Ohio, 1963-64. In 2000 Ellen unexpectedly asked if I wanted a paper bag full of her letters, hundreds of letters she had written to her parents beginning in 1953 when she was a freshman in college up through 1966. Ellen never married or had children and presumably didn't think any of her relatives might care to have her letters. Ellen was an enthusiastic and peripatetic student who fell in love with Spain, and inevitably with a young Spanish man. In the summer of 1961, while traveling through the mountains of Spain with him - he was driving her car - the car went over the side of a mountain. Her fianc was unhurt, but Ellen broke her spine and was never able to walk or use her hands freely again. And the engagement was broken. On a subsequent visit to Spain she learned shocking facts about Fernando from his relatives. Nevertheless she continued her studies and returned to teaching in 1963. She could walk with difficulty using a cane, but used a wheelchair too, and in later years had her "fleet" of motorized chairs. She always hoped for some kind of cure, but it did not come in her lifetime. But Ellen was intrepid. She never gave up traveling, and organized our school's (and perhaps the city's) first high school student exchange with the Monterrey, Mexico, Rotary Club (Yrator). She chose me along with five other students to travel by train to Mexico in the summer of 1964, where we lived for a month with Mexican families. It was a glorious experience for me. Ellen was dynamic, disciplined, kind, tactful, resourceful, practical, generous, and strong. She was a na ve girl, whose exuberance tended to take over, but she had a sense of humor about herself, and the relentless, girlish archness of the early letters softened as she matured. Her penchant for organizing and coming up with adventurous plans and projects was a magnet for people who "liked to do things," as an old friend said, who called her The Big O, The Big Organizer. "People laughed at me because I followed Ellen like a puppy dog, but she was great at organizing things and I liked to have fun." She was athletic, but when all that remained of her athleticism was the ability to swim for therapy, she complained about the public pool facility, but not about her lot in life. Ellen was an avid fan of ice skating all her life, even before her accident. Afterward it must have represented freedom of movement she would never have again, a freedom she admired from the audience, but did not resent.