“She really loved her life here, but Newfoundland was always a big part of who she was,” said her daughter, Chicago, Ill. lawyer Jeannine Cordero, who teared up talking about Hipditch Ellzey Tuesday while speaking of her with pride.
The native Newfoundlander, who once worked as a housekeeper for famed Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider, died Saturday of breast cancer at age 81.
Hipditch Ellzey was an orphan who spent several years from the age of 13 to 17 in Belvedere girls’ orphanage before she left for the U.S. to take a home-care job for an elderly man in Maryland.
She married a Colombian-born doctor and spent some time in Mexico and her husband’s native country before divorcing and returning to the U.S. with Cordero.
Cordero said her mother rebuffed the strict structure of the 1950s, which in Colombia meant women could not go out unescorted.
“She was an independent, free-spirited, pretty strong-willed woman,” Cordero said.
Hipditch Ellzey later married a serviceman and had two more children.
Hipditch Ellzey trained as a dental assistant and worked for a time with two prominent Maryland orthodontists who treated Washington, D.C., politicians.
She loved working for the Snider family in Pennsylvania, Cordero said, as it allowed her to travel with them, as well as attend events at the stadium. Hipditch Ellzey revered Snider, who she thought was the greatest person since U.S. president John F. Kennedy, her daughter said.
Hipditch Ellzey ended her working life in the household of a prominent banking family in Chicago — the founders of the Northern Trust Bank — her daughter said.
Hipditch Ellzey instilled the importance of education in her three children.
“She really stressed education to me — trying to be independent, have my own career, be able to stand on my own two feet. She was very much about trying to imbue that in me,” Cordero said.
Though life in Newfoundland held some fond memories of Irish heritage and days spent picking forget-me-nots and playing in Victoria Park, life had turned tragic early for Hipditch Ellzey.
When she was eight, her lumberjack father died after a work accident. Her mother developed consumption and spent time at the old sanatorium for tuberculosis treatment. Though Hipditch Ellzey’s mother remarried and had two more children, Hipditch Ellzey had missed most of Grade 6, staying at home helping to care for the youngest of two siblings because of her mother’s illness, Cordero said. Then her stepfather also died early.
Hipditch Ellzey was placed in Belvedere Orphanage at age 13, while her two siblings by her mother’s second marriage were adopted by relatives, Cordero said.
Prior to her entering the orphanage, the family — headed by a twice-widowed single mother — also lived for a time in row housing off Water street near Victoria Park. The housing had only cold water and a shared bathroom for all the housing tenants.
Soon after Hipditch Ellzey entered Belvedere, her mother died.
“One night, a nun came over to her bed in the orphanage and said, ‘Shirley, your mom has passed.’ No comfort, no nothing,” Cordero said of the story recounted to her.
Later in life, Cordero was able to put her mother in touch with fellow Belvedere residents through a Facebook group and reunited her on the phone with one woman she had not spoken to in six decades.
“Just to listen to them sharing their stories was amazing. I was glad to put her in touch,” Cordero said.
None of her children have visited Newfoundland, but Cordero said the plan is to bring Hipditch Ellzey’s ashes back to the province, as she had remained proud of her link to pre-Confederation Newfoundland.
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