Elaine Cohen Billian

Elaine Billian, 87, of Aspen Hill, Maryland, passed away on December 9, 2023, peacefully at her home. Elaine was born Elaine Cohen in Washington D.C. on March 22, 1936. She met Bernard Billian in 1955, they married, and she graduated from Sinai Hospital School of Nursing in Baltimore in 1956, serving as President of her class. They had four sons Carl, Stephan, Mitchell, and Elliot. She had a long career in many disciplines of hospital nursing and was part of the earliest movements in Washington D.C. promoting and delivering hospice care. This included working for Washington Home Hospice, the first residential hospice facility in the D.C. area. She returned to school later in her life, earning a B.S. at the age of fifty-two. After retiring in 1998, she had several hobbies and community service activities, including knitting and sewing, reading and book-clubs, gardening, parenting dogs, and traveling. She was an avid watcher of public television and lover of classical music. She was preceded in death by her mother and father, David and Mollie Cohen, her husband Bernard David Billian and her brother Robert Cohen, and is survived by her children Carl (Ann), Stephan (Tatyana), Mitchell (Margie), and Elliot (Heather), brother Stanley Cohen (Marilyn), nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. A graveside service will be held on December 13, 2023, at noon at Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park in Clarksburg, MD. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to VisAbility Art Lab of Rockville or the public television channel WETA.