Joan Tibbs Eldridge, 69, Spanish-language professor

Joan Tibbs Eldridge, 69, of Swarthmore, a former Spanish-language teacher at what are now Neumann and Widener Universities, died Thursday, July 26, of cancer in the rehab center at Devon Manor.

Her husband, Maurice, vice president for college and community relations at Swarthmore College, said in an interview that in 1993, she was acting dean and director of the Black Cultural Center at Swarthmore.

"We often put people in interim positions" such as that, her husband said, "while we do a search" for a full-time director.

Born in Washington, she earned a bachelor's degree in 1964 in Spanish at Georgetown University, a master's in 1968 in Spanish literature at Columbia University, and a doctorate in 1989 at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

Dr. Eldridge taught from 1964 through 1969 in the program Foreign Language in the Elementary School of the Washington public schools.

After marrying in 1969, she joined her husband at the Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, Mass., where she taught Spanish until the school closed in 1974.

After her husband became principal at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a public school in Washington, she taught Spanish from 1979 through 1988 as an assistant professor at Howard University.

The Eldridges then moved to Swarthmore, her husband said, and from 1989 to 1991 she was a visiting assistant professor at Widener University.

She then commuted to Washington to teach again at Howard, this time as assistant professor of Spanish and as Spanish-language coordinator from 1991 to 1993.

In her final role, she taught Spanish at Neumann from 1994 until her retirement in 2000.

While teaching in Washington in the early 1990s, her husband said, she cofounded, with arts activist Gail Dixon, the D.C. Arts Education Foundation. She was its president in 1995 and 1996.

"Their aim," her husband said, "was to bring some life to the arts in public elementary schools."

As a Swarthmore resident, she was a member of the Philadelphia chapter of the Girl Friends Inc., whose website states that the social organization for African American women was founded in 1927 during the Harlem renaissance and that its second chapter was established in 1928 in Philadelphia.

Her husband said she had an extensive collection of African American dolls and Santas.

In Washington, she was a member of the 19th Street Baptist Church. Later, she was a member of Christ Church in Philadelphia.

Besides her husband of 43 years, Dr. Eldridge is survived by son Jonathan, daughter Maria Fisher, and four grandchildren.

A funeral service was set for 11 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 2, at Christ Church, Second Street north of Market Street, with a graveside ceremony at 2 p.m. Friday, Aug. 3, at National Harmony Memorial Park, Landover, Md.

Donations may be sent to the Chester Fund for Education and the Arts, Box 22, Chester, Pa. 19016.