Frances Elliott Prugh

Frances Elliott Prugh passed away peacefully at her residence in Bethany Village on October 20, 2019. She had recently celebrated her 99th birthday with family. She was preceded in death by her husband of almost 76 years, E. Kemp Prugh, and is survived by two sons, E. Kemp Prugh, in Vienna, Virginia, and Thomas E. Prugh, in Eugene, Oregon; a daughter-in-law, Evanne Browne (John Butterfield), in Arlington, Virginia; a grandson, Gordon Evan Prugh, and his partner, Catherine Cooper-Smith, in Vancouver, British Columbia; and numerous nieces and nephews.

Born in 1920 in Covington, Virginia, Frances was the sixth of eight children of Henry Gordon Elliott and Norma Barber Elliott. When Frances was two years old, the family moved to Newton, Iowa, where she lived and received her primary education until she went to college in Monmouth, Illinois. Frances served on the Newton High School student council and was class vice president during her junior and senior years. She represented Newton High School in the high-school court at the Drake Relays. She was also the valedictorian of her graduating class. During her senior year, she participated in a program in which she went to school in the mornings and worked in the afternoons at the Automatic Washer Company—for the grand salary of $1.50 per week! However, this experience enabled her to obtain full-time employment there for the next two years, after which she left for Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois. After two semesters there, she was unable to afford to continue, but in the meantime she met her future husband, Kemp Prugh.

In Newton and later, music was a long-standing, vital part of her life. As a sophomore in high school, she helped establish a mixed choral group that made it to a regional music contest in Minneapolis, Minnesota. On a subsequent visit with an aunt in Northfield, Minnesota, she was thrilled to sit in on a rehearsal of the famed St. Olaf Choir. With three friends, she formed a singing trio with piano accompaniment that performed at various service organizations in the Newton area and also enjoyed a spell of radio fame by performing live on the air at a Des Moines radio station for several months.

After becoming engaged in March 1943, Frances and Kemp were married on August 28, 1943, in Newton. In 1945, they moved to Dayton, Ohio, where Kemp had a job at the University of Dayton. They lived in converted army barracks on the campus. Later, the family moved to a house on Eileen Road in what would become Kettering, Ohio. In 1953, now with two young sons in tow, they moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where Kemp worked for Hamilton Watch Company. While there, Frances helped organize a Parent Teacher Association (PTA) group and sang in the Presbyterian church choir. The family returned to Dayton in 1956, where Kemp worked for the National Cash Register Company until he retired in 1984. Frances worked with the PTA group in Kettering for several years. She also served as the unit secretary in the North Unit of Fairmont East High School for six years. She then was hired at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, first working as the secretary to the head of the international affairs division and later for the president. She retired in 1984.

Frances and Kemp were enthusiastic travelers. One of their first overseas trips was to attend the 1972 Munich Olympics. They subsequently made several other trips to Europe and in 1987 began the first of many trips to Switzerland along with several to Scotland and Austria. Upon retirement, they completed a 74-day, 13,500-mile road trip throughout the American West. They also undertook many subsequent road trips that took them to places all over the country and to nearly all of the well-known national parks in the West. In 2007, they took their last trip to Switzerland. In 2010, with (young) Kemp driving, they took a cross-country drive to Vancouver, Canada, and then embarked on a cruise to Alaska.

Frances was an active member of Sugar Creek ever since she and her family moved to Kettering in 1945. She sang in the church choir for many years as well as in a women’s chorus. She was also active in P.E.O., a women’s educational philanthropic organization, and served on the first Kettering Human Relations Commission.

A memorial service for Frances will take place at 11:00 A.M. on November 23 at Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church. A reception will follow in the Fellowship Hall. The family requests that any donations in her memory be made to the P.E.O. organization (donations.peointernational.org) or to Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church.