[Dialogue] dialogue Don Elliott (& National Parks)

[Janice Ulangca]

For Stateside colleagues, the PBS series on American national parks is phenomenal - and has Thurs. Fri. Sat. of this week still to air, finishing the 6 episodes.  It gives the perspective of the spiritual renewal from these glories of nature, and also the stories of  the heroic folks who invested their lives to protect them - for theirs and for future generations.  Some of these stories of energy and persistence and passion remind me of your account of Don Elliott, Louise.  Thank you for sharing this.

Janice Ulangca

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Singltn at aol.com 
  To: oe at wedgeblade.net ; dialogue at wedgeblade.net 
  Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 7:33 PM
  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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