THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 1996 TAG: 9610020145
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CAROLE O'KEEFE, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 113 lines
Laura Hurt Elmore believed in working in the trenches, emphasis on working.
In many ways a pioneer, she was always a worker, longtime friends - including many who met her through her work - recalled after her death Sept. 25, at age 89.
Most of her life was spent helping the sick, the disabled, the lost and the poor. She did it ``because that's what she wanted to, that's what she enjoyed. That's just the way she was,'' said her sister, Jennie H. Butler.
She had been a healthy octogenarian through Christmastime, said Martha E. James, her daughter. ``But this spring, she started going downhill.''
She needed surgery again on a ligament first repaired in 1980. After her hospital stay, she suffered a virus and a stroke, James said.
Laura Elmore grew up in Kenbridge and graduated from Longwood College in Virginia. She taught school for four years in Nansemond County and Suffolk. She married T. Llewellyn ``Lew'' Elmore and had to give up teaching. That was the rule at the time. No married teachers.
When daughter Martha was old enough to go to school, Laura Elmore considered returning to teaching. The marriage and baby rules had relaxed by then. But she took the Lung Association up on its offer to be its director, beginning in 1943.
King S. Bishop, a community activist himself for many years, recalls that Elmore brought the Lung Association's services into the neighborhoods that needed them most.
``I remember meeting her the first time when tuberculosis was on the rampage,'' he recalled. ``She used to park the trailer about a block from where I lived. I took advantage of the free X-ray - everybody did - even though we were having them done on our jobs,'' Bishop said.
Through the years, he recalls having worked with her on several community projects. ``She was no selfish person. When Christ is in the life of any person, it makes them different, and she was willing to help anyone - in the black community or the white community.''
She brought the Miss Christmas Seal fund-raising program to the city and the county.
Laura Elmore was the first woman to serve on Suffolk City Council. Women didn't run for council in those days, but she consented at the urging of the Suffolk Business and Professional Women. Then Mayor Richard Woodward promised he would resign if she were elected, and he did. She served from 1955 to 1963.
In another first for a woman, Elmore was selected 1976 First Citizen by the Cosmopolitan Club.
Fellow Democrat and former councilman and mayor Andrew B. Damiani said Elmore ``had no personal agenda, no interest in personal gain. If it was a social issue, she did it out of the grace of her heart. If there was a void, she filled it. If nobody was doing it, she did it or found an organization to do it. She knew what and where the resources were.''
Damiani met Elmore through her husband, Lew, who was secretary of the Democratic Committee. ``I met her in the late 1950s and we became longtime friends.''
He noted that Laura Elmore was a leader by example. ``She was in the trenches with the people. People migrated toward her because of that.''
When she found people slipping through the cracks of social services for assorted reasons, she helped found Suffolk Services and Emergencies, which provided immediate food, shelter and clothing for people not able to qualify for or wait for assistance.
She worked for the young as well as the old: on the Committee for Employment of the Physically Handicapped, the Suffolk Substance Abuse Youth Council, the Suffolk Interagency Health Council, Meals on Wheels and Long-Term Care boards.
When she saw that there were organizations who needed volunteers and volunteers who wanted to donate time, she helped found the Voluntary Action and Information Center.
As she became older herself, she saw many needs of senior citizens and she saw how the seniors themselves could be of service to younger people. She helped organize the RSVP program here, or the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, giving older people a chance to share with others the skills they have refined over a lifetime.
Elmore was also active in seeking additional, affordable housing for the elderly. She also worked with the Alzheimer's Support Group for the area, the Task Force on Aging which she represented in Washington D.C. in 1981 as well as the Silver-Haired Legislature in Richmond in 1983 through 1985.
Mary Maxey, widow of lawyer Landon Maxey and a former director of Suffolk Social Services, knew Laura Elmore for 41 years. ``She was very special, very dedicated, willing to give the time and herself to do those things to help people, whether directly or indirectly. She was a good woman, just really had a tremendous faith in people and God. She thought that was her niche in life, that she could help others.''
Daughter Martha says her mother was strong-willed. ``She never gave up. She always stood up for what she thought was right.'' Most recently, Martha said, Laura Elmore refused to go live at the nursing home and continued with her community work nearly to the end of her life.
Tidewater Occupation Center, a sheltered workshop for people with handicaps, was about to honor her for 20 years of service, but Elmore died before that could happen. Still, said Barbara McClenny, administrative director, Elmore's work will be noted at a by-invitation affair, the date of which has not been announced.
McClenny knew Elmore for nearly a quarter of a century. ``She always put others before herself. She just had a whole lot of heart, and she put all her efforts and energies into helping others even with all the other activities she was involved in.''
Elmore's husband died in 1990. They had two grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Other achievements, involvements and interests:
Member of Main Street United Methodist Church and a Sunday School teacher for more than 56 years
Longwood College Distinguished Alumni Community Service Award
In Who's Who Among American Women, Fifth Edition
In Virginia Lives - Who's Who in the Old Dominion, 1964
Received the Nora Spencer Hamner Award from the Lung Association
Charter board member of STOP, Southeastern Tidewater Opportunity Project. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Laura Elmore, the first woman to serve on Suffolk City Council, died
Sept. 25 at 89. ``She thought that was her niche in life, that she
could help others,'' says friend Mary Maxey. by CNB