Eleanor Nishiura

Eleanor Nishiura passed away on May 3, 2026, in Southampton, Pennsylvania. She was born Eleanor Gail Noble on November 25, 1934, in Godfrey, Illinois, the third of Eleanor (Wortman) and Richard Noble’s five children. After growing up in Bunker Hill, Illinois, Ellie received a BA from Illinois College in 1954 and earned a PhD in sociology from Purdue University in 1959. While studying at Purdue, Ellie met her future husband, a fellow student, Togo Nishiura of Mountain View, California. They married in 1958 and remained together for 62 years until Togo’s death in 2021.

In the 1960s, Ellie and Togo moved briefly to Milwaukee and then settled in Detroit, where they raised five children and Ellie focused professionally on public health issues. She was a researcher and teacher at Eastern Michigan University, the Department of Community Medicine at Wayne State University, the Sickle Cell Detection and Information Center, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan. She was a researcher and writer in the Department of Economics at Wayne State University at the time of her retirement.

After retiring, Ellie and Togo moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where Ellie volunteered as a docent at the Carlisle Historical Society, taught adult literacy, and campaigned locally for Barack Obama and the Pennsylvania Democrats. They moved to Southampton in 2013.

Throughout her life, Ellie was an avid gardener who believed in the power of home-cultivated compost and the magic of growing plants from seed. She was a lover of poetry, with a particular fondness for reading and reciting Emily Dickinson. She will be remembered as a crossword puzzle maven, an excellent pie maker, a Detroit Pistons fan, a wonderful parent, grandparent, and friend, and a person of strong ethical and political convictions. She enjoyed traveling the world with Togo, and she was equally happy at home observing the trees, flowers, wildlife, and changing seasons outside her window.

Eleanor is survived by her five children and their spouses: Geoffrey Nishiura, Red Bank, New Jersey; Katherine Nishiura (Jerry Nassar), Falls Church, Virginia; Stephen Nishiura (Irene Skricki), Baltimore, Maryland; Elizabeth Nishiura, Chicago, Illinois; and Sarah Nishiura (Matthew Groves), Chicago, Illinois. She is also survived by her five grandchildren, Elijah, Hannah, Henry, Alex, and Meredith; her brother James Noble and his family; the families of her siblings Richard Noble, Georgia Fritz, and Peggy Clem; the family of Togo’s older brother, Takao; and Togo’s surviving siblings, Eizo, Patty (Aoki), Frank, Jim, and Alfred, and their families.