When Eleanor Brazier overheard two men in a Mississippi diner using profane words to describe African-Americans, she got up from the table she shared with her husband and three children and strode over. “My mom was getting very, very upset,” recalled her son Mark. “She walked up to those guys and just laid into them.” Mrs. Brazier, 78, of Chicago, died Saturday, Jan. 31, of heart failure in St. Joseph Hospital. Mrs. Brazier grew up in Chicago during the Depression. She attended Chicago Teachers College and began her career with the Chicago Public Schools as a teacher in 1947. She met her husband, Jack, who taught physical education at the school. They married in 1951. She was an assistant principal at Sayre School from the 1960s through the 1970s and helped guide the school through the busing of mostly minority students into the mostly white, middle-class school over the protests of parents. She became principal at Irving Elementary School in 1982 and retired in 1989. Besides her son, survivors include two other sons, Bruce and David; and five grandchildren. A life tribute will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Community Room at 2626 N. Lakeview Ave., Chicago.
