Homemaker & mother. Ellen was quite a character. Born in upstate New York, she worked for more than 40 years for New York Bell as a telephone operator. Her husband of more than 50 years, Ed "Fast Eddie" Sommer (deceased in 1990), was a New York Bell Lineman, which is how they met. We used to enjoy her pronunciation of the numbers five (fie-yuvv) and nine (nie-yun), as taught to her by the phone company. Often referred to as "Shopping Mame [Master of the Shopping Game]," she would go up and down each aisle at CostCo, or any other store she happened to be in, whether she needed anything there or not. "I might miss sumthin'," she'd say. She "played the shopping game" well into her 80s until health considerations forced her to watch from the sidelines.Mother to daughters Ellen & Carol, and son-in-law Frank. Loved making wartime recipes from the odd concoction of common items found in her kitchen. (Her "tomato paste birthday cake" was something you'd never forget once you'd tasted it...) Loved dogs, especially Old English Sheepdogs, and parakeets. Spent hours setting up her hearth at Christmas time, filling it with hundreds of small china houses and toy cars.Rest in peace, "Shopping Mame."
Homemaker & mother. Ellen was quite a character. Born in upstate New York, she worked for more than 40 years for New York Bell as a telephone operator. Her husband of more than 50 years, Ed "Fast Eddie" Sommer (deceased in 1990), was a New York Bell Lineman, which is how they met. We used to enjoy her pronunciation of the numbers five (fie-yuvv) and nine (nie-yun), as taught to her by the phone company. Often referred to as "Shopping Mame [Master of the Shopping Game]," she would go up and down each aisle at CostCo, or any other store she happened to be in, whether she needed anything there or not. "I might miss sumthin'," she'd say. She "played the shopping game" well into her 80s until health considerations forced her to watch from the sidelines.Mother to daughters Ellen & Carol, and son-in-law Frank. Loved making wartime recipes from the odd concoction of common items found in her kitchen. (Her "tomato paste birthday cake" was something you'd never forget once you'd tasted it...) Loved dogs, especially Old English Sheepdogs, and parakeets. Spent hours setting up her hearth at Christmas time, filling it with hundreds of small china houses and toy cars.Rest in peace, "Shopping Mame."
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