Rosemary W. Waite Elliott

April 24, 2021. Beloved wife of the late Paul Eskridge and Dr. Willard B. Elliott; loving mother of Tim (Elaine) Elliott, Alan Elliott, Meg (Kent) Richter, Etta (Peter) Eskridge, Paul (Lyn) Eskridge and Caroline (John) Elliott; cherished grandmother of J.T. (Patty) Richter, Bill (Kristen) Richter, Alex Mintz, Cora and Rhys Eskridge; devoted great-grandmother of four great-granddaughters; also survived by two sisters and one brother; predeceased by her parents and one sister.

Friends are invited to attend a Memorial Service Saturday afternoon, May 8th, at 3 o’clock in Williamsville United Methodist Church, 5681 Main St., Williamsville, 14221. Masks and social distancing required. Livestream the service at www.youtube.com/channel/UCIydb6K54_CHhyIBeZa27rQ.

Flowers gratefully declined. Memorials may be made to Williamsville United Methodist Church Memorial Fund or to Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Rosemary Caroline Waite was born to Milton and Edith Waite, in Norfolk, England, in 1934. As the eldest, she helped care for her younger siblings Poppy, Marigold (Goldie), Daniel and Lillian. She inherited a lifelong love of gardening, and especially of her favorites of roses, zinnias, petunias and begonias, all found in her garden today.

Rosemary’s early childhood was in war-torn England. Living on the east coast meant many dangers for the family. The beaches were mined against invasion and food was scarce. One day, when the pupils returned to the school after their noon meal, they found that the building had been strafed by a German airplane. The family moved to London to escape some of the danger and ran a shop in Chesham north of the city. Eventually Rosemary became the first in her family to go to university, at the University of Birmingham where she excelled in chemistry and sang in a national choir.

After graduation, Rosemary and her boyfriend at the time took teaching jobs in Nova Scotia as jobs were scarce in England. They traveled to Canada by sea and lived near Halifax for a few years. Later, Rosemary got a job in Rochester, NY, teaching chemistry and math at a local private school. She met her lifelong friends Bob and Peg McFadden there, who helped her in her early years in the United States. At a graduate course at the University of Buffalo, Rosemary met her future husband Paul S. Eskridge (on the faculty at St John Fisher College), and they were married in July 1958. Less than two years later, Paul died while on a job interview in West Virginia. Rosemary was caring for their first daughter Etta and pregnant with their second child Paul; she went down to Alabama where her mother-in-law lived to have her son delivered. After traveling back to England to sort things out, she decided to return to graduate school at the University of Buffalo and, while also being a single mother of two small children, earned her Ph.D. in 1965. She went on to do postdoctoral work at the university in molecular genetics (then a brand-new emerging field) and eventually became a faculty member at Roswell Park Memorial Institute in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

In July 1968 she married Willard Elliott, her former Biochemistry Professor, and became stepmother to his children Timothy, Alan, and Meg. She and Willard had one more child, Caroline. Rosemary continued her work at Roswell Park doing research in mouse genetics and eventually on a mouse model for colon cancer, an illness that took Willard’s life in 1980. She mentored many graduate students and postdoctoral students during her tenure at Roswell. She received her last grant in 2005 and continued working until full retirement ten years ago.

After retirement, Rosemary continued to engage in her community with friends, support groups, and attending concerts at the Buffalo Philharmonic. She attended Williamsville United Methodist Church for many years, where she participated as trustee, committee member, treasurer, and a member of the handbell choir, as well as volunteering with Niagara Frontier City Ministries. She continued to travel widely until the last several years, traveling alone to Greece, Japan, France (her favorite city was Paris) and back to the UK for courses in genetics at Cambridge University as a lifelong learner. She was devoted to her family on both sides of the Atlantic and spent many summers visiting family in the UK.

Rosemary is remembered as a woman of great intelligence, courage and commitment to helping others in all walks of life, a loving mother, grandmother of five, great-grandmother of four, aunt, cousin, sister and scientist.