Born in Brooklyn NY during the Depression, Elaine was raised as the younger daughter of Leon and Olga Thomashefsky. Elaine put herself through Baruch College and worked at AT&T. Elaine married and moved to Westfield, NJ and created a home that was the center for all extended family holiday celebrations with delicious dinners and at least five homemade desserts (Elaine had a serious sweet tooth).
Elaine valued the education of experience and shared the beauty of nature with her daughters through gardening, observing wild animals in the backyard, creating terrariums filled with various plants and creatures, and going bird watching. The arts were important to Elaine and she enjoyed taking her daughters to museums, events at the Lincoln Center, NJ Performing, and plays at the PaperMill Playhouse. She encouraged her daughters to take ballet/dance lessons and learn to play the viola & piano. Elaine loved the sun and ocean and planned family vacations to the beach. Travel was a passion and she arranged trips with family and later with friends to Greece, France, Switzerland, Russia, Italy, Equador, the Galapagos Islands, Japan, China, Thailand, and Egypt. Elaine loved art and color and would pick bright flowers to press and later arrange into pictures. She also took sketching and watercolor painting classes.
Elaine was a voracious reader and loved to learn. After raising her daughters to school age, Elaine began a rewarding career in the Rahway School System in her forties initially as a substitute teacher and then full time as a 4th grade teacher. There Elaine made a difference in many young lives.
She also made lifelong friends whom she loved dearly. Her friends and family loved her because she was smart, sharp, funny, witty, insightful, real, caring, and more than alittle bit sassy. Elaine retired late, after 70, because she enjoyed her vocation and friends. She continued her education with adult history, yoga, and finance classes. After her husband passed, Elaine moved to Sparta NJ with her beloved cat Ana and enjoyed decorating her apartment, going to orchid shows, visiting art museums, growing orchids (she could get them to rebloom!), reading, playing scrabble, and visiting with family and friends.
Elaine is survived by her daughter Alice and Son in Law Ron Baldassano, their dogs, daughter Amy and Son in Law David McGowan, their clowder, her niece Elaine and her husband Stephen Fischer, their children Jacqueline and Michael, and nephew Peter Zaloba.
***Funeral services are private. Please ignore information obtained from Echovita or any other unauthorized source*****
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