Eleonore Elgert Gepner was born March 22, 1915 in Kempa Karolinska, Poland. She died November 13, 2018 at DuPage Care Center in Wheaton, Illinois. She emigrated from Germany through Ellis Island in 1926 with her widowed mother and three younger siblings. After graduation from Richmond Beach High School in 1932 and some secretarial school, she began working for German Steamship Lines. This ended when WWII broke out.
Eleonore married Richard Gepner in 1941 and two children soon followed. She began her new career as homemaker and also took up a number of varied activities. She possessed the proverbial "green thumb." Her roses, fuchsia baskets, and tuberous begonias were always gorgeous and she enjoyed gardening for many years. Her activities soon expanded and began involving the rest of the family. She took up pottery making. Richard built her a pottery wheel and a kiln to fire her creations. There were many trips up to Taylor river to get clay for her pottery. She also took up rock collecting and polishing with trips to eastern Oregon to search for the perfect agate or geode. Eleonore loved to sing. She had a beautiful soprano voice and always sang in the church choir. When Eleonore and Richard moved from Bellevue to Leavenworth, she joined the Village Voices and sang with them for several years.
Eleonore loved to embroider. She began making hand embroidered paraments (decorative church hangings or vestments) in the late 1950s and continued doing this for over 30 years. Along with other women of Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Bellevue, she sewed a complete set of alter cloths for the entire church year. She also embroidered wall hangings and vestments for Christ the King Lutheran Church in Eastgate. The paraments for Christ the King included a set for Advent that required thousands and thousands of stitches and won first place in a local stitchery show.
Eleonore is survived by her brother Oscar Elgert, 100, of Kennewick, Washington; her son Jim (Kathy) of The Woodlands, Texas; three grandchildren and two great grandchildren. She is preceded in death by her husband Richard, her son Steven, and her sisters Erika Kamprath and Melita Messer.
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