Eleanor Fleming, pioneering speech therapist, teacher, administrator, and volunteer, has died at 92
She found ways to help those who needed guidance and education the most. "She had a good way of meeting people with respect," her daughter said.
Eleanor Fleming, 92, of West Chester, pioneering speech therapist, longtime teacher, assistant principal, and program supervisor in Chester County, died Tuesday, April 4, of congestive heart failure at her home at the Hickman senior living center.
Beginning in the 1960s, Mrs. Fleming worked as a speech therapist at the Chester County Intermediate Unit in Downingtown. Drawn to students with special needs and aware that those with speech and hearing issues were especially underserved in schools at the time, she assessed, treated, and supported hundreds of students in the West Chester School District.
Later, she became supervisor of speech, hearing, and language services for all schools in Chester County, assistant principal at the Child and Career Development Center in Coatesville, and the intermediate unit’s district service team supervisor for Phoenixville and West Chester. She studied the nature of speech impediments while earning a master’s degree at Pennsylvania State University and was one of the first researchers to show that such issues were not determined by race or ethnicity.
It was her ability to listen, assess someone’s needs, and find a way to meet those needs that set her apart, said her daughter Beth Buglio. “She was a teacher at heart,” Buglio said. “As a supervisor she was about helping the teachers. They didn’t always like her upstairs, but she said it was important to do it first and apologize later.”
A member of Holmesburg United Methodist Church as a youth and United Methodist Church of West Chester as an adult, Mrs. Fleming worked tirelessly with church leaders and others to address housing and health care inequities. She volunteered with Chester County’s Interfaith Housing Assistance Corp. and the Project One management program for HIV-positive residents after she retired in the early 1990s. In 2010, she helped found Act in Faith of Greater West Chester to better assist those in need.
She sang in the 90-member West Chester Ecumenical Choir, which included singers from eight local churches and Kesher Israel Congregation, and told The Inquirer in 2004: “It’s important for faith communities to work together.”
Born Sept. 30, 1930, in Philadelphia, Eleanor Ann Hetherington had a knack for science and graduated from Frankford High School in 1948. She earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education in 1953 at West Chester State Teachers College, now West Chester University, and received a master’s degree in speech pathology and audiology in 1963 from Penn State.
She met Bill Fleming during their high school days, and they married in 1953 and had daughter Beth and son Todd. Her husband, also a teacher, died in 2012.
At first, Mrs. Fleming taught elementary school students in North Carolina, Langhorne, and Bellefont, Pa. The family finally settled in West Chester in 1967, and she later supervised student teachers at Immaculata University.
Imagination and individuality were at the core of her personality. “She was a progressive teacher who knew that the arts are a kind of play that nurtures child development,” her daughter said. “Her classroom and the home of her children were full of rhymes and pretending, stories and costumes, dancing and music, paint and puppets, and papier-mâché.”
Mrs. Fleming enjoyed vacations in Maine and traveling with her husband, children, and grandchildren. She entertained friends and colleagues often at her home in West Goshen Township and invited many of them to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with her family.
She was an avid reader and taught her children and students to recite poetry. She was broad-minded, disciplined, a good listener, and flashed her endearing sense of humor often.
She had an organic garden, dynamic mind, and open heart. Her son recalled her “absolutely beautiful caring, how she dealt with those in need and pain.”
Her daughter said: “She had a good way of meeting people with respect and helping them sort things out. She was loving.”
In addition to her children, Mrs. Fleming is survived by four grandchildren and other relatives. A sister died earlier.
Visitation with the family is to be from 9 a.m. to 9:45 Saturday, April 15, at United Methodist Church of West Chester, 129 S. High St., West Chester, Pa. 19382. A funeral service is to follow at 10 a.m.
Donations in her name may be made to Act in Faith of Greater West Chester, 212 S. High St., West Chester, Pa. 19382.