Elinore R. Dusedau loved to travel. As soon as she learned to drive, she packed her blue Chevy station wagon, fastened a trailer to the back and took her three children on a two-month summer road trip from New York to California and back.
She did this twice. The first time, her youngest son was a mere 18 months old.
The plans for such a trip were fairly simple. Mom would drive until she got tired, at which point she’d consult a fat book detailing America’s campgrounds. The nearest site would be the family’s resting spot for a day or two.
“I didn’t understand then how amazing it was that she took all her children and went cross-country by herself,”
her daughter, Marga Dusedau, recalled. But she did have some help: “My brother learned how to change a tire when he was 9 years old.”
This adventurous spirit is one of the things her children will miss most about their mother. Dusedau, a resident of the Jewish Home, died Feb. 5 in San Francisco. She was 83.
She was born in 1925 in Cologne, Germany. When she was 13, she and her mother moved to New York to escape Nazi persecution. They stayed there until Dusedau was old enough to go off on her own and moved to San Francisco.
She studied sociology at San Francisco State University, but dropped out after a year when she got married. Years later, Hellmuth and Elinore Dusedau moved to New Jersey with then 6-year-old Marga. They had two more children, Stefan and Erich, before they divorced.
Her children recall their mother as being warm, kind and creative. At one point or another, she worked as a secretary, diamond polisher, bookkeeper, bank teller and caterer (while her hors d’oeuvres were in high demand in New York City, her children joked that her experimental home cooking was not as reliable). She volunteered often, wrote short stories, sewed, knitted and made jewelry.
“Even at the Jewish Home, crippled by Parkinson’s, she painted in the art studio,” Marga said.
She was also a fiery liberal. Her daughter remembers marching around the house as a child, decorated with mom’s buttons, singing old labor songs her mother taught her.
“In my mother’s house, we grew up boycotting so many things — Welch’s products, Volkswagens, grapes,” Marga recalled.
But Dusedau also took seriously the task to fight for civil rights, peace and human dignity. She marched on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War.
“The strength of her beliefs came from her idealism … and that we all have a duty to make the world a better place,” Marga said.
In 1970, Dusedau took a trip even bigger than that of her cross-country days. With 10-year-old Erich, she moved to Israel and stayed for 10 years.
“She was very interested in the Zionist movement and thought a lot about a ‘worker’s paradise’ and the kibbutz movement — it all had tremendous appeal to her,” Marga said. “She was always a socialist, even when she was very young.”
Erich and Elinore moved to Haifa, into a small two-bedroom apartment in a poor Sephardic and Russian neighborhood. They lived there for several years before they could afford a telephone and television.
“There were lots of books, always books, all over the place,” Erich recalled. Dusedau decorated the place with used furniture and her own artwork.
She made friends with her neighbors, most of whom were younger than her, thus becoming the mother hen. Her longest-lasting job was at an agency providing financial and educational assistance to young female immigrants.
“They really liked her, and when they got settled in, they would invite my mother to their house,” Erich said. “None of her other coworkers got invited. But my mother did. That really says something about what she was doing.”
Dusedau returned to San Francisco shortly after her first grandchild was born.
She is survived by her daughter and son-in-law Marga Dusedau and David Sklar of San Francisco; son and daughter-in-law Stefan and Nina Dusedau of Tenafly, N.J.; son Erich Dusedau of Alameda; and grandchildren Max and Jonathan Sklar, Neal Dusedau, and Zachary and Emily Dusedau.
Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the Jewish Home in San Francisco, Jewish Family and Children’s Services or to a charity of your choice.