Eleanor Curtin Krask, of Pittsburg, died Monday, Sept. 4, 2006, at the Cornerstone Village Nursing Facility.

She was born in 1918, in Taylorville, Ill., to Frank and Margaret Curtin. She attended the University of Illinois and received a bachelor's degree from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ill., and a master's degree in art education from Northern Colorado University in Greeley, Colo. She continued post-graduate studies at Rutgers University and took additional coursework in watercolor in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.

She began her teaching career in a small, rural elementary school in central Illinois, and held a variety of teaching responsibilities in Illinois and Colorado elementary and high schools before taking the position in Evanston, a Chicago suburb, a job she held for 24 years. After retiring from teaching, she continued to work for the Evanston school district for two years and was active in a number of national and local service organizations providing food tray decorations for hospitals, table center pieces, and other artistic displays for organizations.

She moved to Pittsburg in 2001 where she lived at the Vintage Place before moving to Cornerstone.

Survivors include a daughter, Majorie K. Schick of Pittsburg; a sister, Marjorie Klein of Elburn, Ill.; a grandson; and a nephew.

Memorial services will be at 1 p.m. today at the Cornerstone Village Chapel for residents and friends with Sister Ann Meyer as celebrant. Inurnment will be at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Taylorville and a memorial service in Skokie, Ill., will both be held at later dates. Online condolences may be left at www.bathnaylor.com.

Arrangements are under the direction of the Bath-Naylor Funeral Home, 522 S. Broadway, Pittsburg.

Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project For Craft
and Decorative Arts in America

Interview with Marjorie Schick

Conducted by Tacey A. Rosolowski
At the Artist's studio in Pittsburg, Kansas
April 4-6, 2004

http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/schick04.htm

Excerpt from Interview . . .

“But then my mother decided she needed her Master’s so she – during the summers, we would go to Greeley, Colorado. I think that’s Northern Colorado State University [University of Northern Colorado] in Greeley. And again I’d go to summer schools to pass the time – the lab schools and she was doing all these – she took it in Art Education, so she was doing all of these amazing art projects and doing color theory and all that – and fell in love with Colorado, so we moved to Colorado.

And I was then in seventh grade and we lived in Longmont and she taught high school there, so when I got into high school I didn’t want to take art, though I think that was where my heart was, but I didn’t want to take art because my mother was the art teacher, right?

So I took home ec and at that time I was starting to learn how to sew. In fact, my mother got me a sewing machine that I simply wore out. And I’ve got pieces of – you know, when I made my first thing – a skirt – I had bought this ultramodern pattern. This was the ‘50s.”