Elinore Dannenberg Taylor
(November 26, 1929 - January 12, 2014)

Elinore Dannenberg Taylor was born in Huntington, West Virginia November 26, 1929 the daughter of Nan Hawkins and Harvey Carter Taylor. She graduated from the Marshall Laboratory School in 1948 and from Duke University in 1952.
She worked briefly as a reporter for The Huntington Advertiser and then for WHTN Radio and Television as Continuity and Traffic Director. She later spent a year in Richmond, VA as a social worker at the Bon Air School for Girls. In 1965 she returned to Huntington and became Director of Christian Education for the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church in which position she served for five years. In 1970 she became an instructor of English at Marshall University where she remained until her retirement as an Assistant Professor of English in 1991. She earned a Masters' Degree from Marshall and later a doctorate from West Virginia University, as well as taking a semester's work in Religious Drama at Boston University and a semester at Union Seminary in New York. She served on the boards of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC,) the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, and Church Women United as well as being an elder at Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church. She wrote two plays which saw production: They'll Cut Off Your Project, an adaptation of the book by Huey Perry, which was also filmed and shown on WV Public Television; and Appalachian Spring Postponed. Both were produced and staged at Marshall University, the former through a grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council, and the latter through the auspices of the Marshall Women's Center.
Her lifelong commitments were to her family, playwriting, politics and the Presbyterian Church. Her parents, her sisters, Nancy Taylor and Margery Taylor Fowler, and her brothers, Harvey, John, and Kennon Taylor preceded her in death. She is survived by her nieces and nephews: Carter Taylor Seaton of Huntington, Wallace and Kennon Taylor of Richmond, VA and Columbus, Ohio respectively; Nicholas Taylor of Lusby, Maryland, Christine Carlsen of Fairfax, VA, and Deborah Higgins, Nan Goldstein, and Darrell Fowler of Albuquerque, NM as well as many great nephews and nieces, their children and grandchildren, all of whom make up four generations of "the family." Services will be held at Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church at 2 p.m. on February 1, 2014, preceded by visitation from noon until 2. Graveside services at Spring Hill Cemetery, Huntington, WV will follow. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church or OVEC (PO Box 6753, Huntington, WV 25773-6753.)