Elaine Armstrong Vall-Spinosa Cochran Dunkle
May 14, 1915 – March 4, 2012
Elaine Cochran Dunkle passed away peacefully at her home at Scientists’ Cliffs on Sunday, March 4, 2012. Until her final days, she was active and intellectually engaged–working the daily crossword puzzle, knowledgeably discussing current events with family and friends, and walking her dog Hershey on the beach as she also collected sea glass. In fact, she may have been the oldest volunteer delivering (not receiving) Meals on Wheels–a community service that she continued until early 2012.
Early Life
Elaine was born in 1915, the second of three children of Alice Blanche Wigley (1880-1954) and Arthur Vall Spinosa (1880-1959). Her father was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, the son of a Spanish Anglican missionary priest and his wife who emigrated to the United States in 1895 to make a better life for their children. Elaine’s mother was a native of Pittsburgh, PA.
College and Early Careers
Elaine recalled her father, as an immigrant, strongly believing that realizing the American Dream required the best education possible. Elaine graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1937. She began her teaching career immediately after college, at the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, PA.
The following year, after her first year of teaching, she and two friends sailed to Europe for an 11-week excursion. Of her time in Germany in 1938, Elaine recalled: “The sheer quantity of swastika flags was unbelievable. Flags flew everywhere. German youth groups composed of virtually all the visible young people wore khaki uniforms and swastika armbands. We were greeted with ‘Heil Hitler’ in restaurants, stores and hotels.”
She later learned that “Austria had been occupied just a few weeks before our visit and we stayed in Innsbruck at the same time that Hitler, Goebbels and Goering were in a chalet on a mountain nearby.” She returned to New York at the end of August of 1938, having not read a newspaper for eleven weeks, and “was greeted with relief by our families who were fully aware of the imminent danger of war. We were quite oblivious to all this.”
In 1941, Elaine accepted a teaching position at The Kent School in Denver, CO. On December 7, 1941,she was on the ski slopes at Berthoud Pass, in the Rocky Mountains, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was reported. The following summer, Elaine applied for a government position and was hired as a clerk in the war department.
Marriage and Motherhood
At war’s end, on October 6, 1945, Elaine married Harry Dean Cochran (1894-1986), whom she had met in Denver and who had recently moved to Washington, DC, in connection with his work for the U.S. Forest Service. Two sons, Peter Vall-Spinosa and Arthur Edmund, were born to the couple in 1947 and 1948 respectively. Moving with Dean’s work, the family lived in Wisconsin, Taiwan, and Ghana before settling in Calvert County, MD.
Dean and Elaine Cochran built their house at Scientists’ Cliffs in the mid-1950s. They were among the first full-time residents of the community, which had begun in 1937 as log vacation cottages for “scientists” on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The house sits high on a cliff with a panoramic view across the Bay. Elaine, always an early riser, especially cherished watching the sun rise over the Bay.
In the mid 1960s, Elaine returned to teaching, first at Fairview Elementary School and then at Brooks Middle School in Calvert County. She always enjoyed sharing her knowledge and experience to mentor the new and younger teachers.
Citizen Activism; Enlarged Family
Elaine joined the Arlington, VA, League of Women Voters (LWV) in 1945. She helped organize the Calvert County League in 1967, serving as President from 1989 to 1991 and continuing to be an active, informed participant well into her 97th year. Later this month, the LWV of Calvert County is honoring Elaine with its 2012 Women of the World award.
In retirement, Elaine spearheaded the successful Bicentennial effort of the Calvert Retired Teachers Association’s to restore Port Republic’s One-Room Schoolhouse so that it could continue to provide learning opportunities for adults and children alike. Every Calvert County Public School fourth grader participates in a day-long program experiencing what it would have been like to attend this rural one-room school, which operated from 1870 to 1932–a school with no computers or typewriters, no internet, no phones, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and no running water.
Elaine was a founding member of the American Chestnut Land Trust (ACLT). Created in 1986, ACLT was in the forefront of a new grassroots conservation movement. Today, ACLT manages almost 3,000 acres in the Parkers Creek and Governors Run watersheds on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
A life-long Episcopalian, Elaine had been a member of Christ Church, Port Republic, since the early 1950s, serving as a member of the Vestry, a lay reader, a Sunday School teacher, and an active participant in the church’s annual jousting tournament.
At age 78, on January 1, 1994, Elaine married retired Calvert County School Superintendent and widower Maurice Dunkle, 81, at Christ Church. The couple travelled extensively and participated in many community and civic activities until Maurice passed away in 2001.
Elaine was an early member of the Calvert Daughters of Abraham, founded in 2002 after 9/11 to overcome stereotypes and to foster mutual respect and understanding among Muslim, Jewish and Christian women. She was also one of the first women to enroll in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, America’s longest-running scientific study of human aging, begun in 1958.
Elaine was predeceased by her brother, the Reverend Arthur A. Vall-Spinosa; and her step-son, Dean Farrington Cochran. She is survived by her sister, Alice Ellsmore Vall-Spinosa Northrup, of Vienna, WV; son Peter Cochran of Frederick, MD; son Arthur Cochran of St. Leonard, MD and his wife Peggy; granddaughter Cathy Cochran Yestramski and her husband Mike of Baltimore, MD; granddaughter Betsy Cochran Iampieri, her husband Chris, and their daughter Mia Leigh of Owings Mills, MD; step-daughters Frances Dunkle Poling of Prince Frederick and Margaret Dunkle of Port Republic; step-grandsons Jon and Brian Poling; step-great-grandchildren, Nikolaus and Hannah Poling; and many nieces and nephews.
Funeral Services and Donations in Elaine’s Memory
Funeral Services–Christ Church, Port Republic, March 9, 2012, 11 A.M.
The family suggests that anyone wishing to make a donation in Elaine’s memory consider either:
• Christ Episcopal Church, 3100 Broome’s Island Road
Port Republic, MD 20676
• Calvert Hospice, 238 Merrimac Ct, Prince Frederick, MD 20678