Elinor Pariser

Born Elinor Schoenfeld on 8/22/1938 in Brooklyn, N.Y. to Sidney and Lena. She grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn and attended Thomas Jefferson High School.

Diagnosed at an early age with cerebral palsy, Elinor’s childhood was punctuated with a long series of corrective surgeries that enabled her to live an active and engaged life, though one that was not without challenges. She refused to have those challenges define her and spiritedly pursued adventures whenever and wherever they presented themselves.

In addition to reading, particularly detective stories and mysteries involving Jews, among her passions was devotion to baseball she cultivated as a child. Her father was a big Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and so was she - often attending ball games at Ebbett’s Field - until the Bums left Brooklyn. Elinor begrudgingly transferred allegiance to the Mets and remained an often disappointed, but nevertheless loyal Mets fan for 64 years. (Her father, on the other hand, never watched another ballgame in his life.) Even living in the Bronx for 40 years couldn’t lure her from the Mets to the Yankees.

Witty and funny, and always open for an adventure, Elinor made and kept friends easily, Among her best friends growing up, Elinor cultivated a life-long, sister-like relationship with Helene Katz, which only ended with Helene’s death.

As a young woman, Elinor worked at an office in Manhattan, riding subways to and from Brooklyn and eating lunch at the Automat and Woolworths. She was a member of the Federation of the Handicapped, which, among other things, organized dances and social gatherings for disabled people. She met and made lifelong friends at the Federation, including Helene, as well as her future husband. In 1961, the organizer of the Fed introduced her to Mitchell Elias Pariser, a young man with cerebral palsy who had started an organization called the Pioneer Club in Westchester, where he lived, that held social gatherings and encouraged disabled people to vote. They were married six months later.

Elinor stopped working and began mothering. Over the course of the next 60 years, she had three daughters and moved from Brooklyn to Queens then to the Bronx. Later she lived in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, before moving to Rolling Hills nursing home in 2021.

Engaging, and ever-so-slightly sarcastic, Elinor was the consummate storyteller. She would regularly regale friends, family and visitors with outrageous tales of her childhood in Brooklyn, growing up among Jewish entertainment stars and gangsters - outrageous until one checked the facts and found the stories to be true.

Elinor is survived by her brother Michael Schoenfeld and his wife MaryJo, of Las Vegas, NV; daughters Stacy and her husband Ira Fishkin of Ramsey, NJ; Bonnie and her husband, Warren Cooper of Frenchtown, NJ, and Rachel and her husband Phil Fresiello, of East Islip, NY; grandchildren, Jonathan, Scott, and Leah Fishkin; Dominique and Zachary Wander; Lily and Matthew Fresiello.

In lieu of flowers, donations made be made to UCP.org.