Eleanor Weiler Lucas

Eleanor H. (Weiler) Lucas, age 99 of Concord passed away on November 6, 2013, at Life Care Center of Nashoba Valley in Littleton. She was the wife of the late Charles Edward Hill and the late Walter F. Lucas.

Born in Cambridge on July 16, 1914, she was the daughter of the late Ernest G. and Margaret L. (Murray) Weiler. She attended Bates College in 1932 and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1936 . She also completed the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Program.

During her career she worked as a social worker, edited the house organs of the New England Electric Company and the American Optical Company, and taught French at Woodstock Academy in Woodstock, Connecticut. After the launch of Sputnik she taught herself Russian with the help of an Eastern Orthodox priest and started a Russian program at the Academy.

In the mid-Sixties she bought a small summer cottage in Quaise where she was able to expand her lifelong interest in botany. Eleanor became the head of Elder Affairs on Nantucket and was instrumental in bringing the federal program Meals on Wheels to Nantucket. Over the years she regularly visited her clients, especially those who lived alone, taking them food she had baked herself.

Eleanor was on the board of Landmark House and a member of Maria Mitchell.
She and her husband Walter, a photographer, gave slide lectures about the natural bounty of Nantucket, especially edible plants. An amateur mycologist, she once saved a life by identifying the poisonous mushrooms a less careful collector had eaten.

She loved Nantucket and served it well.

She is survived by her daughters, Susan Hill Birge of Concord, Mass. and Ellen Senich of Waterbury, Conn. She is also survived by her grandchildren, Jesse Birge, Matthew and Andrew Garcia and Mary Ellen Senich, as well as six great-grandchildren.

Gifts in her name may be made to:
The Maria Mitchell Association
4 Vestal St., Nantucket, MA 02554.
www.mariamitchell.org