Elinor Roberts Vallance, more commonly known to her Island and Foundation House friends as Ellen, was born 15 November 1917, in Bristol,Virginia, the 3rd of Henry Roberts' and Lois Neille Blackwell's red haired daughters.She was called "Bay" for her red hair. She and her sisters, Lois and Marianne (Mickey) grew up in Bristol, close to their many cousins, aunts and uncles in the area.Her mother had come to Virginia from Mississippi to go to school and met Henry. Although distance made frequent visitswith her mother's family impossible, in later years her mother,then known as "Nanny Mama",would come to stay and the families remained close. Ellen survived typhoid as a child. She grew up a shy young woman, and took to smoking when she was 17. It helped with her shyness. She would tell the story of how she was smoking one day and one of her friends said "Oh, Ellen, you look so sophisticated!"She did not talk about it much, but she wished that she had known then what later came to be widely known about cigarettes.Even though she stopped smoking many years before her death, the damage to her lungs was done and in later life it made activity very difficult."Coffin tacks" was what she called cigarettes. She wanted to tell the young people she saw smoking to stop it!She attended Kings College, and eventually wentto workas a secretary at the Bristol division of MonocoupeAeroplane and Engine Corp wheretheymademolded plywood nose cones for gliders such as were used in the invasion of north Africa.ThereshemetJames"Jim" Vallance, a tool engineer. He was transferred to New York, but came back to marry Ellen, and they lived in New York and later in Bucks County Pennsylvania where their son Alex was born in 1945. She liked to talk about dealing with rationing during the war and how she learned tocookaftershe got married.A letter from her mother was found in her recipe box telling how "Aunt Lizzie" made her dumplings, and how to boil a fat hen, skim the fat, and use it in place of butter which could not be obtained.Ellen said that the first chicken she tried to cook was a stewing hen, and she roasted it. The skin tasted great but the rest was so tough that it could not be eaten.

For a time they lived in Holston Valley of Tennessee, near Bristol, where Jim built a little house, and later theykept a small store. Her daughter Lois Ellen was born in Bristol, Virginia in 1947.In about 1953 they packed up the car with luggage and children and headed for the Pacific Northwest, Jim having accepted a job at Boeing.They lived in the Burien/White Center area until one day they took a sightseeing drive toVashon Island and fell in love with it. Soon they were renting a house near the old Burton grade school.All the pipes froze that winter prompting a move to a home on the Burton Peninsula. Later they rentedat Glen Acres, and Paradise Cove, and eventually purchaseda small house near the Heights ferry dock, then the larger house next door. Jim liked boatsand fishing and they could be found out on the water on many weekends. Once the children were older, she got a job in Vashon, and later worked at Boeing. Jim died in 1983 leaving Ellen to carry on the house alone.Her son Alex also predeceased her, dying in Florida in 1993. She loved to read, and to play bridge. She loved cats and dogs, and knitted beautifully. When Lois was small, she sewed her clothes.She loved flowers and her yard was beautiful.She was especially fond of roses and fuchsias. She freely shared the bounty of her yard and enjoyed arranging flowers and sharing those arrangements.She enjoyed her friends and was a good friend to them. She was active at the Senior Center,the Computer Club,the Garden Club and the Unitarian Fellowship . In 2004 Ellen moved to Foundation House near Northgate in Seattle as her sight and her lungs were failing and she wanted to be close to her daughter.Leaving Vashon was hard, but she enjoyed her stay at Foundation House,made friends, and played bridge regularly.Her lungs continued to fail. At the last she was very tired and forgetful. Everything was an effort but she remained continually patient and kind. Ellen was a gracious lady, and her daughter does not recall her being unkind to anyone,or speaking unkindly to anyone to their face or behind their back.One of her sayings was that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything.8 December, Ellen drew her last breath at 9:25 PM at her daughter's home with her daughter holding her.Her passing was peaceful. She will be greatly missed by her daughter, her granddaughter Jennifer Vallance, and her friends.