Ellen Judith Tabachnick, 68, of San Francisco, CA, passed away from cancer on March 24, 2021 in Boston, MA. Ellen was the daughter of the late Dr. Henry and Betty (Greenberg) Tabachnick of Portland, Maine. She grew up in a large Portland house, where the family lived upstairs from her father’s practice. Her father was generous and outgoing, a congenial man. Portland notables were always in and out of the house. It was an active, lively household. In her early years Ellen attended Portland Hebrew Day School and later enrolled in Waynflete College Preparatory School, Portland and Northampton School For Girls in Northampton, Massachusetts. She completed an advanced three-year Bachelor of Arts degree at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Ellen’s greatest passion was the pursuit of justice. She developed an early concern for the oppressed. While in her teens Ellen volunteered at a local prison community with the goal of advancing conditions for the inmates. Later, in order to actualize her quest for an equitable society, Ellen earned a Juris Doctorate degree from Cal Western Law School, San Diego.

Ellen practiced law at Contra Costa Legal Services Foundation, in California. However, she was not your average attorney. A cross between Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Bella Abzug, Ellen was a force to be reckoned with, a woman who seized life by both lapels. She began her practice as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow, educating low-income community groups about their legal rights and responsibilities while carrying a full caseload challenging termination of government benefits. She believed holeheartedly in civil liberties, justice and a level playing field. Ellen’s imaginative legal insights, her indefatigable passion, and pure chutzpah enabled her to win most of her cases.

In particular, Ellen championed the Hmong’s community right to communicate with government agencies in their own language. A dedicated, fierce and creative advocate, she succeeded in assisting many families retain their benefits. Ellen spent her final years as a pro bono advocate for undocumented persons, including minors threatened with deportation.

She loved music. Forever the life of the party, Ellen would pick up her guitar and play folk tunes for the children or sit at the piano, her father’s Stetson firmly atop her head, and bang out the score from “Fiddler on the Roof”. She was bighearted, generous. She never forgot a birthday, and enjoyed giving presents even when there was nothing in particular to celebrate. Giving was in her heart and one could not refuse. She was Auntie Ellen, Aunty-Godmother Ellen, Auntie Chicklet, Ms. Civil Liberties, Ellie. She was our own Auntie Mame, a woman brimming with life, a justice warrior who lived unequivocally by the concept in Judaism of tikkun olam, ‘repair the world’.

In addition to her parents, Ellen was preceded in death by her brother, Robert Tabachnick, and her nephew, Henry Tabachnick. She is survived by her sister-in-law, Aileen Tabachnick, and her nephews Jacob, Abraham, and Elijah Tabachnick. Ellen is buried at Beth El Memorial Park, Portland, Maine alongside her father, mother, and nephew.

Donations in Ellen’s memory can be sent to:
The Campaign for Justice https://caforjustice.org/

Emily Webster Williams died peacefully at home in Essex, CT on May 8th, 2021. She was born in New York City on January 4th, 1939 – daughter of Emily Johnston deForest and Dr. Leslie Tillotson Webster. Emily was the proud mother of Amy, David, Matthew and Andrew Snyder, who were raised in Glastonbury. A graduate of the Smith College School for Social Work and an exceptional therapist, she was a champion of acceptance and empowerment for her family, her clients, and the LGBTQ community. She spearheaded the effort at First Congregational Church of Essex to become an open and affirming congregation, a designation they officially adopted in 2010. She retired from private practice in Old Saybrook in 2014. Emily moved to Essex Meadows – Essex, CT – in 2014. There she met and married Robert Butler, and enjoyed her last years in his loving company. She is survived by her husband, Bob; her brother, John Webster of New London; as well as her children: Amy Colo, David Snyder and Andrew Snyder ’84. Andrew resides in Old Lyme. Her six grandchildren, and her many nieces and nephews will also miss her dearly. Summers in the Adirondacks will not be the same without her. A Memorial Service will be held at the First Congregational Church of Essex on Saturday, May 22, 2021 at 3:00pm. Contributions can be made in her memory to Adirondack Trail Improvement Society PO Box 565 Keene Valley, NY 12943 (518) 576-9157 atis@atistrail.org.

Elena Maria Giamatti Ewing died at home with family in Portsmouth, NH, on April 15, 2021, of complications from dementia. She was born in Boston on June 14, 1940, to Valentine Giamatti, son of Italian immigrants, and Mary Walton, daughter of the Yankee establishment. Her two-year-old brother promptly and permanently re-christened her Elria. She grew up an American original, with a personality as unique as her name, vibrant, independent, and strong-willed.
Elria was raised in South Hadley, Mass., where her father was on the faculty of Mount Holyoke College. When the family moved to postwar Rome for her father’s sabbatical year, her uninhibited personality was found disruptive in first grade at the Swiss-German School. So she stayed home and learned Italian from maids and neighbors, including Mussolini’s daughter, Edda, then recently released from prison. She also met Pope Pius XII when the family received a private audience. Italian became her fluent second language then and during her father’s later sabbatical in Rome, and her college junior year in Florence.
Her skirmishes with organized education continued through South Hadley public schools, the American Overseas School of Rome, the Northampton School for Girls in Northampton, MA, Wells College in Aurora, NY, and the School of General Studies at Columbia University, where she earned a BS degree in Romance languages in 1963.
She was a natural athlete, good at horseback riding, tennis, and skiing.
Elria got to know David Ewing over many summers at camp in New Hampshire. They were married in 1963. Their first year of married life was in Sierra Leone, West Africa, where both taught secondary school. Their first son was born there by unplanned caesarian section in a rural Catholic mission hospital. The young family grew by three in the next four years after they returned to the States.
Elria repeatedly created secure and nurturing homes for the family as David’s work took them to four countries of Asia and Europe, as well as Virginia, Washington, D.C., and New York City. She was ever a formidable advocate for them with the inevitable bureaucracies of life and education, bruising a few egos in the process.
Fortunately, she had a restless nature; she counted 19 moves in her life. When she wasn’t moving, she was traveling. Her children remember, not always fondly, a rail tour of Europe when they were ages 10 to 14 under the Spartan guidance of Europe on $10 a Day. She avoided flying but counted 25 ocean sailings starting in 1947, including two Pacific crossings. She and David took the Queen Mary II to Europe in its inaugural year and five roundtrips thereafter.
Elria also counted at least 15 jobs, including stints in local newspaper advertising and real estate. She was a natural teacher. She taught English to Japanese schoolgirls and to adult groups including the Taipei City Council and Japanese housewives. She coordinated a program to find summer jobs for American teens in Tokyo. She related particularly well to young people, and is fondly remembered by alumni of the American School in Japan, where she worked in the library, and American University in Washington, D.C, where she was an academic counselor.
Retirement years took the couple to East Dover, Vermont, where she raised llamas and opened an antique shop, and finally to Portsmouth, where they have lived for 19 years. She liked New York City, Lord &Taylor and Italian opera. She joined choral singing groups in Vermont and New Hampshire.
Wherever she went, Elria made friends and was known for her cooking and entertaining, with an international accent. She was active in community organizations, often making sure people were well fed. In Portsmouth she organized the first lobster bake and the first holiday caroling for the South End neighborhood association, both of which became annual events. She was a member of the Academy of Senior Professionals at Eckerd College (Fla.) and the New Hampshire chapter of The Colonial Dames of America at Portsmouth’s Moffatt-Ladd House.
Elria’s family is deeply grateful to the exceptional caregivers who made it possible for her to remain at home in comfort during her last years.
She is survived by her husband; son Jeffrey Ewing and wife Daphne of Conshohocken, Pa.; son Dino Ewing and wife Janine of Eastchester, N.Y.; daughter Valentina Leonard and husband Edward of Acton, Mass.; son Nathaniel Ewing and wife Emily of Nottingham, N.H.; ten grandchildren; one great-granddaughter; and a brother Dino Giamatti and wife Barbara of Scarborough, Maine. She was predeceased by her parents and an older brother, A. Bartlett Giamatti.
She will be remembered at private observances. Memorial contributions to the Alzheimer’s Association are suggested.

Joan Sherman enriched the life of Mount Washington Valley through her co-ownership of radio station WMWV and her dedication to numerous arts and culture associations. She died from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease on Nov. 19, 2020, at Merriman House in North Conway. Joanie often said that she was drawn to New Hampshire after seeing the movie, The Devil and Daniel Webster, when she was a little girl. For her, it was a dream come true to move here. Joanie loved New Hampshire’s small towns, tight-knit communities, and rural roots. Living here both nurtured and inspired her. Born on Sept. 7, 1929, in New York City, Joanie grew up in Great Neck, Long Island, and attended Northampton School for Girls in Massachusetts. After graduating, she studied at Juilliard School of Music, Barnard College, and the Peabody Music School. In 1948, she married Lawrence (Skip) Sherman. After Skip got his journalism degree at the University of Iowa in 1955, they moved their family to New England. He worked as a reporter for The Springfield Union and The Providence Journal. Meanwhile, Joanie began a career in sales, which led to her learning the radio business at WERI in Westerly, R.I. In 1959, they moved to Conway to manage the AM radio station WBNC, which had been purchased by Joanie’s boss at WERI. A year later, they bought the station, and in 1968 they started a sister FM station, WMWV. As sales manager, Joanie immediately slashed the price of advertising, enabling any business, however big or small, to broadcast its message. She also founded the station’s long-running annual gardening contest for amateur and professional gardeners. Skip managed the news as well as the music programming, which soon displayed his signature touch: a spicy mix of jazz, country, rock and roll, and classical music. Meanwhile, the station’s doors opened to the community. Its reporters and announcers were everywhere: dog sled races, high school concerts, tennis tournaments, the Fryeburg Fair, you name it. Radio interviews introduced listeners to local historians, naturalists, musicians, and authors, and the morning weather report gave everyone a head start by rating the day up to fifty cents. “It’s a real fifty-center” became insider slang for another beautiful day in Mount Washington Valley. In 1997, Joanie and Skip sold the station and retired. Amicably divorced in 2002, they remained close friends. As a woman in broadcasting, Joanie broke new ground. One of the first women in sales, management, and ownership, she served on the board of the New Hampshire Association of Broadcasters and, in 1965, was the first woman to address the Radio Advertising Bureau in New York City. Moreover, the legacy of the station she and Skip created has endured. In addition to her work in sales and broadcasting, crafts and fine art were always central to Joanie’s life. She won awards and recognition for her embroidery and for her hooked rugs and also taught crafts to community groups. In the 1990s, she studied at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia and at the Portland School of Art in Maine, and she took workshops in creative writing. The result was an autobiographical series of paintings and short essays. In 1992, the collection, “Dreams & Memories: Paintings and Stories,” was exhibited at the Idia Center in Intervale, N.H. Selections were featured in other exhibitions, notably the New Hampshire Historical Society’s folk art exhibition, “Traditional Roots, Contemporary Expressions,” in 1994, and subsequently at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. The entire collection was published in 1994. An indefatigable extrovert, Joanie was devoted to her community. (As a kid, when she realized that she couldn’t meet everyone in the whole world, she burst into tears.) She served on many arts organizations including Conway’s Home Industries, the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, the Mount Washington Valley Arts Association, and Arts Jubilee. She also helped to establish Planned Parenthood in New Hampshire and worked to bring community mental health services to Carroll County. In later life, she became a member and enthusiastic supporter of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Eastern Slopes. In 2000, Joanie and Skip were the recipients of the prestigious Bob Morrell Award, bestowed by the Mount Washington Valley Economic Council for civic entrepreneurship. Joanie faced many challenges in her life. She had dyslexia and suffered from bipolar disorder with recurring depressions. However, she always described herself as a fighter and believed that we could all make the world a better place for each other. As it is for many who struggle, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was her personal anthem. Happily, in recent years she was able to sing that song a lot with friends and family. In addition to her former husband Skip Sherman, Joanie is survived by their two daughters, Sarah Sherman, married to Jamie Calderwood; and Carrie Sherman, married to Terry Whiting. Other survivors include Joanie’s grandson, Peter Calderwood; her sister, Gretchen Horton; and her brother, Ned Thanhouser. Joanie’s family would like to express their gratitude to Merriman House at Memorial Hospital in North Conway, where Joanie spent her last three and a half years. A celebration of Joanie’s life will be held when it’s safe for friends and family to gather.