Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Mary Elwyn DRINKER
Polly Drinker Elek, 80, of Bryn Mawr, a former editor and past president of the Episcopal Church Women of Pennsylvania, died April 18 of complications from Alzheimer's disease at Bryn Mawr Terrace.
Mrs. Elek graduated from Springside School in Chestnut Hill. After earning a bachelor's degree from Radcliffe College, she volunteered with the American Friends Service Committee in rural Mexico for a year and then worked for the committee in Philadelphia for four years. In 1955, she joined the staff of the Academy of Natural Sciences Magazine and eventually became editor in chief.
She married Peter S. Elek, whom she had met at a church social, in 1964. The next year, she stopped working after the birth of their first child to become "a professional volunteer, pie-baking, tennis fiend," her daughter Francie McComb said, and "an avid, if eccentric, gardener."
Mrs. Elek was active with the Episcopal Church Women of Pennsylvania and served a three-year term as president in the 1980s.
Though she carefully tended a perennial garden at her home in Bryn Mawr in memory of her brother, Sandwith Drinker, who died on Iwo Jima during World War II, she preferred growing wildflowers and indigenous plants, and letting nature take its course on the rest, her daughter said.
She didn't believe in pesticides, mulch or pruning and kept bugs and rabbits away from her tomato plants by splicing them to a ewe bush. Her cousin Ernesta Drinker Ballard, longtime head of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, laughed at Mrs. Elek's methods, her daughter said, but admired her pumpkin-sized tomatoes.
The Drinkers had settled in Philadelphia in 1635. "She was more than a preppy lady from a fine family," her daughter said. "She used to tell her grandchildren that they might not be the fastest or smartest person in the room - but they could be the nicest. She usually was."
In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Elek is survived by a son, Henry; daughters Daphne Scullin and Susie; and eight grandchildren. Her husband died in 2000.
A memorial service will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, 230 Pennswood Rd., Bryn Mawr.
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