For Lucylle Eisendrath, civic involvement was a way of life.
Side-by-side with her husband, attorney Ralph Henry Eisendrath, she supported civil rights causes and the arts.
“It sounds really simplistic, but she felt it was the right thing to do,” said her daughter, Ellen McGeady. “When you’re basically a thinking, caring person such as herself, a person of endless generosity, and you see something that needs doing, you do it.”
Mrs. Eisendrath, 95, died of complications from a stroke Thursday, Sept. 9, in The Park at Olympia Fields, a retirement community.
Born on the North Side of Chicago, Mrs. Eisendrath graduated from the Francis Parker School in 1927. Even then, she displayed a zest for community involvement, the arts and sports.
“Whenever there is an interested group in the senior room, mostly likely Lucy is telling how she talked a cop out of giving her a ticket or about some similar scrape,” reads her yearbook description. “Her athletic prowess is marvelous. Her honors include the president of the Girls Athletic Association in which capacity she worked to unite the girls. … We shall never forget her delightful performance of Pierrot in [the Edna St. Vincent Millay play] `Aria da Capo.'”
A longtime resident of Hyde Park, Mrs. Eisendrath worked closely with Rev. Leslie Pennington of the First Unitarian Church of Chicago during the 1950s and 1960s to support the integration of the neighborhood through the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference.
“When blacks moved in the neighborhood,” said her son, Craig, “she was working with [the community conference], greeting neighbors” and sponsoring welcoming events.
Family members said the Eisendrath home on Hyde Park Boulevard welcomed people from all over the world and from all walks of life, including the Viennese sculptor Egon Weiner, whom Mrs. Eisendrath and her husband sponsored as a refugee after the German occupation of Austria.
Mrs. Eisendrath and her husband also were among the founding members of the DuSable Museum, and in later years she founded the women’s auxiliary of the volunteer department at Cook County Hospital.
A talented pianist in her youth, Mrs. Eisendrath kept the same seat at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for more than 40 years.
That enthusiasm also carried over to her lifelong support of the Cubs. Mrs. Eisendrath always sat behind the Cubs dugout at Wrigley Field, and she knew all the players by name.
Mrs. Eisendrath was remembered as much for her vitality and disarming warmth as for her service, which revealed itself whenever she recounted how she broke her nose playing field hockey or engaged friends and family with tales of her adventures in Egypt, Russia, Jordan, Italy and Japan.
“She made you feel that your existence or personality was enough to give pleasure,” granddaughter Rachel said. “There are probably a half-dozen people who felt she was their best friend.”
Mrs. Eisendrath is also survived by nine other grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Services have been held.
