 Photo by Virginia Porter Reynolds |
Eleanor Lambert grew up on Long Island and graduated from Vassar College in 1941. Her sense of adventure led her to leave the conventional society of her youth to take a job at the John C. Campbell Folk School in the tiny Appalachian community of Brasstown, North Carolina. There she met and fell in love with Monroe Wilson. After World War II, they married, and in 1949, the Wilsons bought a dairy farm in Brasstown. During their marriage of fifty years, they raised four children: Danny, Anne, John, and Florence.
Ellie honed her listening and writing skills while employed as a teacher, social worker, and psychiatric counselor. She received a master’s degree in non-school counseling in 1979. Ellie attributed her love of people and of life to having interacted with a wide variety of people through her many activities in Western North Carolina. Her spirit of advocacy led to her involvement in establishing several community service agencies.
In 1955, she and Monroe were founding members of Hayesville’s Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd. Ellie’s enduring sense of wonder and love of God made her a joyful student of the Bible. In 2005, she published A Fiftieth Anniversary Story of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd. Ellie died in the summer of 2010.
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