Elinor Marie Wright

When teaching speech at Saint Cloud State University, she said that priority one is how you begin and how you end. “Never start or exit with an apology. Not even if you’re late to the stage.” Good advice, coming from a woman who showed us how to live life at the very center of things.

A bit late to the stage herself, she was the youngest of the family—“Babe in the Woods”—born on May 5th, 1925 into a household that was also Max Mercantile, a post office, a sawmill, a wild rice business, a bullhead brokerage. That many-sidedness punctuated her life, and she proved that a big personality could be born from a small place. She had an insatiable appetite for adventure, travel, and experience. She was equally happy sipping a vodka tonic on her screen porch overlooking Big Sand Lake or gazing out over a gray city from her apartment window in Yekaterinburg, Russia or trekking across the Silk Road in Afghanistan or eating yogurt soup in a cave in Cappadocia, Turkey.

If there was ever a cliché, she didn’t write it. She wasn’t just a poet, but an intellectual—a humble Queen in the woods. She had an elegant way of bringing out the best in those around her and making it seem like they had done it themselves. When she wrote you a letter, the script was cursive and sideways. When she wrote a speech, it would make you laugh out loud and bring tears to your eyes. When she wrote a poem, you always felt lucky to spend a moment seeing the world so poignantly from her singular perspective.

Elinor was born to Albert and Esther, and had two siblings, Bernard and Bernice. She and Guido had three children, Dede (married to Thomas Leither), John Detra, and Ellen Detra. Years after Guido’s death, Elinor was delighted to find the second love of her life, Wilbur Wright, and into her life came his son Chuck (married to Judy) and daughter Linda (married to Donald). Her grandchildren, Nicholas (married to Rosa), Luke (married to Lindsay), Maxwell (married to Anna), Mason (married to Danielle), Teresa, Hannah (engaged to Sarah), Gabriel, and Caleb brought Elinor nine great-grandchildren—Itasca, River, Aurelia, Eliza, Masie, Wilbur, Milo, Leonardo, and—of course—little Elinor.

Elinor died at age 98 on Sunday, June 18th at Cherrywood South in St. Cloud. She will be buried at the Pine Grove Cemetery in Max, Minnesota with arrangements entrusted to Neptune Society.

There will be a celebration of life on Tuesday, July 25th, from 1:30 to 3PM at the Sand Lake Community Center.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.neptunesociety.com/location/minneapolis-cremation for the Wright family.