Teacher in Toledo loved family, work

12/3/2004

Eleanor L. LaBine, a retired kindergarten and first-grade teacher in Toledo Public Schools, died Wednesday, her 103rd birthday, in the Hospice of Northwest Ohio, Perrysburg Township.

She fell Sunday in her South Toledo home and broke a shoulder. She had congestive heart failure and used oxygen, her son, Bud, said.

She never hesitated to answer when asked about her longevity, her daughter, Lois Stevens, said. But Mrs. LaBine revealed no secret regimen of diet, exercise, or rest.

She would say instead, "It was the strength of the love of the family and the unity of the family," her daughter said.

And the family was close because of her, her son said.

"She just attracted everybody to her," he said. "She was the nucleus of holding the family together through her love."

Mrs. LaBine taught at Beverly, Harvard, and Burroughs elementary schools during her career in Toledo, retiring in 1965.

"She loved to work with little children," her son said. "She was excited about starting the children out the right way."

She took pride in teaching children how to read, her daughter said. "She professed true interest in whatever they were doing," she said. Mrs. LaBine's daughters, Lois and Dolores, became teachers.

Mrs. LaBine grew up in Calumet, Mich., at the top of the Upper Peninsula. While a senior in high school, she drove a delivery truck for her father's business, which supplied family ice boxes year-round with ice cut in the winter from a nearby lake.

She attended what is now Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Mich., and taught in Milwaukee. Her husband, Nelson, was a freight agent for the Canadian National-Grand Trunk Railroad and was transferred to Cincinnati and, later, Toledo.

The couple liked to play bridge. She taught her children and grandchildren to play the piano.

"She was a woman before her time," daughter Lois said. "She never shirked responsibility. She worked before it was fashionable for women to work, and she loved what she was doing as much as she loved her family."

She and her husband, Nelson, married June 25, 1927. He died Aug. 4, 1988.

Surviving are her daughters, Dolores Morris and Lois Stevens; sons, Robert and Leonard "Bud" LaBine; 16 grandchildren; 31 great-grandchildren, and five great-great-grandchildren.

The body will be in the Coyle Mortuary after 2 p.m. today, with a Scripture service at 7 tonight in the mortuary. Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow in St. Patrick of Heatherdowns Church, of which she was a longtime member. The family suggests tributes to Mobile Meals or a charity of the donor's choice.