Taylor, Esther Bliss 1890-1980

TAYLOR, BLISS, DEERY, NELSON

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes (email)
Date: 12/30/2011 at 20:51:27

Oberlin News-Tribune (Oberlin, Ohio); December 4, 1980

MEMORIAL SERVICES SLATED FOR ESTHER BLISS TAYLOR, 90

A memorial service for Esther Bliss Taylor will be held Saturday at 2 p.m. in First Church. Mrs. Taylor, 90 years old, died at Welcome Nursing Home last Thursday. She had lived there four years.

Esther Taylor was born Oct. 25, 1890 in Windom, Kansas. She grew up in Grinnell, Iowa, where her father, Edwin C. Bliss, was a physician. She attended Grinnell College from which she graduated in 1915; she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1917 she married Lloyd William Taylor and accompanied him to the Panama Canal Zone where he was a coast artillery officer during the First World War. Later they lived in Chicago, while he earned the PhD in physics and taught at the University of Chicago.

Before her marriage and for a period during her husband's time in Chicago, Esther Taylor was a teacher of history in the towns of Griswold and Red Oak, Iowa.

In 1925 Lloyd Taylor came to Oberlin College as professor and chairman of the department of physics, a position he held until his death in a mountain climbing accident on the then-snow-covered slopes of Mt. St. Helens on Aug. 8, 1948.

With her husband, Mrs. Taylor was a vigorous participant in community affairs in Oberlin. Her letters to local papers brought wit and dedication to a range of causes, most of them unpopular.

As president of the local chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, she was perhaps best known for her organizing efforts to keep Oberlin free from the sale of alcoholic beverages, an effort carried on successfully by others down to the present day. She was a member of the American Association of University Women and of First Church.

In 1975 she broke her hip and, after a year in a nursing home near her son and daughter-in-law in Boston, she returned to Oberlin and entered the Welcome Nursing Home.

The Taylor family home at 123 Forest St. is now owned by the Stephen Clapp family.

Esther Taylor is survived by a brother, Edwin M. Bliss of Casper, Wyoming; a son, Edwin F. Taylor of Boston; a daughter, Ruth Taylor Deery of Longview, Washington; six grandchildren, Linda Deery Nelson, Edwin Deery, Kevin Deery, Lloyd W. Taylor II, Helen Crissman Taylor, and Edwin Andrew Taylor, and two great-grandchildren.