GRIMWOOD, Eleanor R. Eakin, of Richmond, died January 21, 2013, after a decade-long progression of Alzheimer's disease. Eleanor was born in Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand, on October 6, 1921. Hers was a family of Presbyterian Missionaries including her grandparents, parents, an uncle, and several aunts. She spoke Thai before she learned English. She always fondly remembered her life as a little girl in Thailand, and she returned there twice in later years. At age 11, she and her older sister were sent to the States for schooling. She attended Berea College in Kentucky, from 1939 to 1943, majoring in home economics and education, and studied at the Merrill-Palmer Early Childhood Center in Detroit. Upon graduation, she married fellow Berea graduate, David Newton Grimwood, an Army Air Corps B-24 Pilot on July 3, 1943, in Albany, Ga. She accompanied him to several training stations and awaited his return from flying 25 bombing missions in southern Europe. After his discharge in 1945, they had two sons, and established a succession of homes in Stanford, Danville, Paris, and Lexington, Ky. He worked for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, and she was a homemaker and mother. In Paris, she partnered with another woman to run an in-home preschool. As Dave's career advanced, they moved to Syracuse, N.Y., in 1961, Burlington, Vt., in 1964, and Richmond, Va., in 1971, where he was State Conservationist. They retired to Richmond, in 1980. He predeceased her in 2001, after 57 years together. Throughout her adulthood, Eleanor developed her skills in crafts and sewing, often making clothes from scratch, as well as curtains and upholstery. She enjoyed house plants and landscaping; she was an enthusiastic pianist and a talented amateur painter. She traveled extensively and appreciated yard sales. She especially loved socializing with friends and relatives, and had a buoyant, self-deprecating sense of humor. She was a wonderful hostess. She seldom met a stranger. She was an exemplary mother, a doting grandmother, a generous friend, and an engaged citizen. Even in the depths of her dementia, she liked to tease and be teased. She was extraordinarily lovely, strong, generous, and tolerant of everything but intolerance, a down-to-earth lady. If Alzheimer's concentrates character, she was essentially a cheerful, kind, and optimistic person. She is survived by her two sons and their wives; her granddaughter; her sister and brother-in-law; and numerous cousins, nephews and nieces. 

Source-her obituary published at the website of Bliley's Funeral Home.