[Dialogue] Don Elliott

[Kay Fulkerson]

Louise,
Thank you for this history and tribute to Don.  I experienced his energy in
a ICA planning room.

Kay Fulkerson

www.JoyfulHealth.biz

602-943-2822

Feel Healthy & Live Longer

 

-----Original Message-----
From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Singltn at aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 4:34 PM
To: oe at wedgeblade.net; dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Subject: [Dialogue] Don Elliott




Don was what my Father called a chaRACTer.  He used the term to describe
someone who is a little bigger than life, hard to define, and hard to
contain.  Don's energy always filled a room and gave it a lift, he was hard
to describe in a few short words, and you never knew where his enthusiasms
and that passionate spirit would turn up next.

 

The Elliott's took RS-1 in Boulder in January 1971.  The Singleton's took
RS-1 at GerogeYost's church - Evanston Methodist- in February 1971, at the
invitation of Bill Hudson who had left the Order and was a minister at
Montview.  Even though we lived a block apart and both went to Montview, we
did not know each other until the long journey that followed from those
courses.   The Elliot's and the Singleton's both went to Summer '71.  We
spent endless Saturday hours as part of the Local Church Experiment, and
every Sunday evening as part of the Pioneers, a cadre assembled by Ken
Barley to follow through at Montview on the Local Church Project.  One
outcome of the LCP was that Montview decided to have a corporate ministry -
all three ministers as equals - in everything, from preaching to committee
work, to salary.  The model is still in place at Montview today.  

 

Don and I attended Session meetings and choir practice, endless meetings at
the Denver Religious House trying to interest forward thinking projects from
around the state into going to India for the International Exposition of
Rural Development.  Don and Freda were one of the early ones to go on Global
Odyssey.  I went to India, Malyasia and Indonesia to visit projects in 1976.
For both families, ICA opened up the world.  

 

In 2002, Don came to the village of Golokwati in Ghana to help launch the
ICA HIV/AIDS Prevention Initiative.  He and John Singleton spent a week
riding tutus visiting all the health facilities in the district to tell them
about the HIV project and assess what health related resources were
available.  People were there from every African ICA office to help figure
out how to train local people to be health educators, and Don knew many of
them from a trek following the Millennium Connection he had taken with Dick
Alton the fall of 2000.  

 

As a Rotarian and member of Montview's Global Mission Committee, he was
instrumental in combining a Montview contribution with Rotary funds to
leverage district and international Rotary funds to provide much of the
funding needed to assist 2003 launches in other countries.  

 

At every level of the ICA network, Don has been an enthusiastic supporter of
an ambitious vision for what was possible:  he helped Denver become an ICA
office, he spent years on the ICA Board and was faithful for years to the
work of ICA International.  I understand when he was on that Board, he never
missed a General Assembly meeting.

 

We did have a difference in politics and we learned it was better not to go
into them too deeply.  I often wondered how people with such differing
political opinions could find companionable direction in our common work.   

 

With his seemingly unlimited energy and resources, he came as close as
anyone I know to walking the fine line that was both freedom and
responsibility, which means that he lived very fully. I join many people who
are going to miss him.  He was always a colleague and a friend.       

 
Louise Singleton MSPH
4 Calle Aguila
Santa Fe, NM 87508
505 983-7077
303 478-9033
singltn at aol.com



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