Elinor Nichols was born March 11, 1927 in Nagpur, India. Being “from the
jungles of central India” was her first story in a lifetime of stories
lived and told. It explained the village Hindi she learned from her Ayah
and the frequency with which she got lost in concrete jungles: “If I had an
elephant, I’d be fine,” she would tell the passerby who showed her the way.
While big sister Carol stayed in the bungalow, Elinor and older brother
Gale roved narrow paths in search of things different than home. There was
the morning the python dropped on them from above. There was the evening
the tiger stalked them home and they could not let themselves break into a
run, lest they be chased.
Elinor’s innate compassion was born in the starving India of the 1930s. She
fed her chapattis to famished dogs at the railway station. She slept with
orphaned baby squirrels. After leaving her parents, Esther Gale and Kenneth
Lyon Potee, to board at Kodaikanal International School, a British hill
station, she experienced hunger firsthand. Privation rooted her life in
gratitude: if you’re alive and not hungry, *It’s Good Enough.*
At school, when Elinor wasn’t attracting suitors with her sunny
disposition, she was rescuing the brown rats that the kitchen cooks caught,
strangled, and threw over the wall into the school playground. The rats
that survived till morning she wrapped in a pair of underpants so they
couldn’t bite, hid them in her dresser, fed them until they recovered, then
released them near the kitchen.
Elinor started Oberlin College in the middle of World War II. To her naïve
eyes, America was an alien place with alien values: money, bridge, alcohol,
movies, and cigarettes. It took twelve weeks for her mother’s comforting
letters to answer Elinor’s homesick ones.
Her college majors, Sociology and Psychology, helped make sense of things,
and people. After marrying Roger Nichols, she earned a Master’s degree in
Psychiatric Social Work, the first class to graduate from University of
Iowa. As her class of three crossed the stage, the dean whispered to her,
“You’re the best student we’ve ever had.” Following a year of visiting
patients at home, Elinor gave birth to Kathleen and Wendy.
To pay off medical school debts, the family decamped in 1957 to Dhahran,
Saudi Arabia, a small compound built on rocky, barren hills near the
world’s most productive oil well, Dammam #7. Camels instead of elephants,
deserts instead of jungles, more admirers of her vim: to Elinor it felt
like home. Being cute in a tennis dress was fun. Driving a forehand shot to
the far baseline was more fun. Yet when imminent loss dispirited her
opponent, Elinor threw the game—invisibly and gently. Winning didn’t mean
diddly-squat.
Jogging home after three sets in 110℉, tennis shoes squishy wet, she
thought she could never be happier. Happiness was also water skiing on the
Persian Gulf, jumping the wake–until she wiped out and fell into a salty
sea of jellyfish and sea snakes.
In another life, Elinor would have been an archeologist. Clambering between
pre-Islamic ruins, she could see camouflaged blonde chert arrowheads where
others saw only rocks. She led Girl Scout troops into the desert to
scramble up jabals and explore wadis. Around campfires at night her guitar
and sweet voice led the singing. When her son, Quaife, was born in 1961,
she sang him spirituals and folk songs.
Inheriting an Arabian mare posed a challenge. She knew her Indian elephants
but it was obvious that *horses* were too big and frightening to ride so
she exercised Sheer by walking her in circles. Her Girl Scouts snickered,
“Mrs. Nichols, we’ve been talking and we think you’re too scared to ride
Sheer.” “I’m not *scared*,” she said, “*I* just need the exercise.” The
girls hoisted her ninety-six pounds into the saddle. Soon, she was
cantering yellow dunes. Soon, galloping the endless beaches.
Twice the family drove 4,000 miles from London to Arabia, jerry cans of
water strapped to the bumpers of a Land Rover, Elinor handing sandwiches to
her three children riding outside on the hood and roof. From Istanbul in
the west to Sharjah in the east, in souks and harbors her Hindi opened
doors—a gold smuggler in Dubai offered her passage on his sailing dhow—but
it was humor, kindness, and warmth that won her a world of friends. Those
who shared their addresses received years of airmail postcards, an honor
they returned by arriving on her doorstep at naptime—horrifying.
In 1970, Elinor moved to a marsh island in Cohasset Harbor, south of
Boston, where she discovered a plethora of animals that needed her. She fed
the possums, porcupines, ducks, chipmunks, squirrels. She fed the coyotes
and foxes that eat them. Spying from a mile away her white Toyota heading
home, red-tailed hawks circling overhead screeched for their daily chicken
wings. On the front lawn, raccoons dined on dog food. When an exhausted
mother of five kits leaned against Elinor to rest while her babies ate from
Elinor’s cupped hands, the two mothers needed no words.
Amirah, her Newfoundland, roamed the nearby beaches in search of picnics.
The phone would ring: “Come get your dog. She just ate our hotdogs.” Elinor
would jump into a canoe and paddle across the harbor. Willingly, Amirah
would clamber into the bow, and ride serenely until a seagull flew by,
whereupon she’d capsize the canoe and paddle towards Portugal.
Unable to pay the mortgage on Bailey’s Island, Elinor and Roger
founded *University
Associates for International Health*, a non-profit. Staffing Arabia’s
hospitals and professional schools sent Elinor crisscrossing Eurasia to
interview and hire hundreds of employees.
After Roger became Director of Boston’s Museum of Science in 1981, Elinor
threw herself into organizing blockbuster exhibits and raising money to
build an Omni Theater. Widowed at age 60 in 1987, her stories of Ramses the
Great drew crowds to their final exhibit.
Elinor gave her grandchildren the world: riding camels past the Great
Pyramid of Giza was not enough; they searched for better pyramids, got
lost, and ended up in an Egyptian Army firing range. At age 85, Elinor
moved to Lincoln, MA, wrote a memoir,* True Tales of Jungle India*, and
explored her new wn, walking four miles a day, every day, in every weather.
She waved to bus drivers, talked to police officers, pet dogs, and told her
stories to whomever would listen which, it turned out, is everyone.
by her
daughter
Kathleen
P. Nichols
--
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