Ellen Lieber, aide at nursery school

Ellen Lieber, 54, of Medford, who survived brain surgery when she was 6, and subsequent disability, to work as a teacher's assistant at Tots Cooperative Nursery School in Moorestown from 1980 to 2005, died of a stroke Wednesday, Nov. 5, at her home.

"She was an unusually brilliant child," her mother, Marlene, said, "but when she started school, she started having problems - falling, dropping things.

"I took her to a psychologist and he said, 'Her IQ is 140 and she has organic brain damage.' "

"After surgery and radiation," Marlene Lieber said, "they told me there was no hope and there was three months to live."

No cause was given for the brain damage, she said.

"She was partially paralyzed on the right side and she had cognitive difficulties because a large part of her brain had been eaten away before the diagnosis and treatment," Marlene Lieber said.

"The remarkable thing was, she just came back and worked and had such perseverance," she said.

Ms. Lieber graduated from Moorestown High School in 1979.

"She fell a lot," her mother said.

"She couldn't use a walker because of the paralysis," she said, but "everybody made accommodations for her."

When she worked with her daughter on homework, "everything was at half-speed with her. But she persisted."

She recalled that Ms. Lieber "loved to read. It took her a long time to get through. But she loved to read."

At the nursery school, she said, Ms. Lieber "was particularly assigned to children who had problems, because she had such great empathy and they seemed to feel it."

Marlene Lieber recalled that "there was an autistic boy who had no relations with anybody but Ellen."

In March 1991, based on a recommendation from a nursery school executive, the Burlington County Board of Freeholders gave her a lifetime achievement award.

Christine Balentine, a neighbor, said Ms. Lieber "was a wonderful, sweet, caring person who had a lot of adversity in her life and she overcame it."

"She didn't let her disabilities get the best of her," Balentine said. "She always had that 'I can do it' attitude.

"A sweet girl. Very sad."

Besides her mother, Ms. Lieber is survived by brothers Lee and Charles. Her father, Robert, died in 2008.

Services are to be private.

Donations may be sent to a charity of one's choice.