Eleanor Lomas McGough Leonard

Eleanor was born on April 15, 1934, in Summerhill, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a coal mine foreman, Russell McGough, and a Registered Nurse, Anna Bassett McGough and little sister to Ellwood McGough. She came from an extended family of poets, preachers, artists and teachers, from whom she inherited an abiding love of words and capturing the beauty of nature in painting.

When Eleanor was six-years-old, her mother died as a result of Tuberculosis she contracted from a patient. Thereafter, she spent summers with her mother’s sisters who taught her “homemaking arts;” she did chores and played on their farms alongside her cousins. Those days and those women were precious to her. She wrote a poem in which she called them “The Sunbonnet Aunts” for the old-fashioned bonnets they always wore when working outside. The hills and family farms of her childhood were reflected in many of her later poems and stories.

The summer before her ninth-grade year, Eleanor moved to Greenville, Pennsylvania to live with Clara Kaulen, a beloved cousin, who was like both a sister and a mother to her, and later, a grandmother to Eleanor’s own daughters. She helped Clara with her small boys, David and Michael, who became as little brothers; a relationship that lasted her lifetime. In time, Eleanor met Delbert Leonard at a church youth group. He was 16, she was 15 and the sparks that were lit that day were still burning brightly in June 2022, when they celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.

Delbert and Eleanor started their married lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where Delbert was stationed in the Navy. Their first home was a tiny trailer without air conditioning, hot water or an inside bathroom, yet they count those days as some of the happiest of their lives. Delbert left the Navy in 1953 and they moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, with their infant daughter, Dena, and Del got his degree in Electrical Engineering.

Del began his career at IBM, and the family moved to Endicott NY, where two more daughters, Daria and Doreen were born. In 1966, they moved to Raleigh. NC and in 1971, to Paris, France. For Eleanor, like most women of her generation, “stay-at-home-mother” was really more than a full-time job. Delbert’s busy career often included business travel, and Eleanor kept the girls’ hectic lives running smoothly. She supported them through school events, church choir, Sunday School, Youth Fellowship, orchestra, band, marching band, Girl Scouts and a myriad of other activities. Eleanor was the glue that held the family together. IBM moved them twice more, to California and back to Raleigh where Delbert retired and they moved to Ormond Beach, Florida, where they lived for twenty happy years. In 2012, they moved to Glenaire in Cary, NC.

Eleanor did extensive genealogy research and was a founding member of the Ormond Beach Genealogy Group where she taught classes and mapped numerous family trees back to England, Ireland, Wales and Germany. She took writing courses, leaving her family a thick book of her poetry and stories; her paintings still hang in their home at Glenaire.

Eleanor once said she is happiest when she and Delbert were in a busy airport, traveling to some wonderful place. They traveled all over the world, adventures she captured in poems; keenly aware of how far they had journeyed since those teenagers of so long ago and deeply grateful for the blessing of their life together.

Eleanor leaves behind her beloved husband, Delbert, her three daughters and their husbands, Dena Jordan (Mark), Daria Ragan (Jerry) and Doreen Herold (Phil); eight grandchildren: Leigh Ann Lichty (Justin), Brett Jones (Jessica) Anna Holloway (Blair), Jessie Zellinger (Boz), Erica Ragan (BJ Barry), Andy Ragan (Kristi Abrecht), Matthew Herold (Sarah) and Ashlyn Smith (Layton). She was also blessed with seven great-grandchildren: Clara Lichty, Emma Kate Holloway, Caroline Holloway, Zach Zellinger, Max Zellinger, Lily Barry and Ellie Ragan.

She is also survived by surrogate brothers and a sister, David Kaulen, Mike Kaulen (Karen) and Melanie Fry (Ed).

Eleanor was predeceased by beloved granddaughter, Meredith Herold in 1993, as well as Clara and Joe Kaulen, Russell and Anna McGough, and Ellwood McGough.

A Celebration of Life Service will be held at Glenaire, 4000 Glenaire Circle, Cary, NC 27511 on July 30, 2022 at 2:00 PM with Reverend Daria Ragan and Reverend Melinda Merkley King officiating. Private interment will be in the Chapel Mausoleum at Raleigh Memorial Park, Raleigh, NC.

In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be made to Brightspire Foundation, The Micou Browne Endowment, 4000 Glenaire Circle, Cary, NC 27511 (brightspire.org), or The Tammy Lynn Memorial Foundation Inc., 739 Chappell Drive, Raleigh, NC 27606 (nctlc.org).

Memories and expressions of condolences can be shared online at Brown-Wynne Funeral Home of Cary, NC.