Julimae "Julie" (Albright) Mceligot

A lovely lady, Julimae McEligot, 92, of Idaho Falls, unexpectedly and abruptly passed away at 0005 MDT. Wednesday, 27 July 2022, at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center from lack of oxygen after deteriorating for seven or so weeks in local medical facilities.  Less than a week earlier she was reading and working on her Sudoku. Julie ("Julimae" was only used in anger)  was strong and stoic;  we expected her to live to 105 or so. Julie brought light and joy while having fun everywhere she went and was a continual Pollyanna.  Family, friends and acquaintances considered her truly a wonderful and engaging person and among the nicest people one knows.  She was the spry, kind, chipper relative who was always so delightful to be around.

Julie was born July 12, 1930, in Terre Haute, Indiana, to Aaron Albright and Frances  Kadel Albright but grew up with them in Aurora, Illinois.  She attended East High School, where an unbiased family friend noted she was their best cheer leader ever, and she was graduated in 1948 as one of the top students.  Subsequently, she attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, on a scholarship and was graduated in 1952, majoring in drama and minoring in education.  After Vassar she initiated her wanderlust ways with a summer bicycling tour of Europe with two girl friends, staying in youth hostels and applying the concepts of the later book, Europe on five dollars a day.  During 1952 to 1957 Julie taught English and drama in high schools in northern Illinois (including East High) and Scotia, N.Y.;  she also served as a stage manager for Hillsdale (Ill.) Summer Theater where she learned how famous actors and actresses behaved.

En route from Aurora to Boston for a change of scenery with two other girl friends in the fall of 1956, she met Donald M. McEligot in Schenectady, N. Y., and they were married on July 20, 1957 in the First Presbyterian Church of Aurora.  Before they met and for decades afterwards Julie studied the German language off and on.  One of their first trips was to a Volkswagen dealer north of Schenectady for Julie to order a scarce 1957 VW "Bug."  The order was cancelled when they married.  During 1957-1963 they made their homes in Seattle, Wash., Allston, Mass. and Menlo Park/Stanford, Calif.  In Seattle, Julie audited courses in theatre and learning to sail at the Univ. Washington.   Son Kim was born in Newton/Wellesley Hospital, Mass. in 1958 and daughter Kyle followed at the same hospital in 1959.  In 1961 Julie devoted her VW fund to an Austin Healey 3000 (AH) with a small back seat for her two small children.  Then in 1962  on our national holiday, Decoration Day, son Sean was born in Stanford Hospital, making cross country trips tighter.  In February 1963, they moved to Tucson, Arizona, via AH across the desert and Julie concentrated on being a successful mother.  Julie loved books and was an avid reader.   She usually carried a book in her purse for waiting for appointments or standing in bus lines.   While in Tucson Julie took advantage of a reduced tuition program for faculty families and studied children's literature to help her own children;  ultimately she had enough credits to earn her degree of Master of Library Science from the University of Arizona.  Later she volunteered as a part-time Librarian at the Pima County Juvenile Court Center.  On weekends the family participated with the fledgling Tucson Soaring Club, with the three offspring all soloing in sailplanes (aka gliders) while Julie served as chief of the ground crew following their cross-country distance attempts.

Over the years Julie enjoyed traveling to see the sights around the sites of Don's sabbatical leaves, technical conferences and Naval Reserve training.  For these periods Julie was primarily a homemaker and occasionally a tourist.  During 1969-70 they lived in Golders Green, London, England and the children attended the local Garden Suburb School.  On one weekend in the spring 1970 Julie and the children drove northwest headed for a desired visit to the Lake District.  After a campground night near Derby, Julie left her purse in the restroom in the morning;  it was not there when she returned to search.  So, lacking funds, she headed back to Golders Green.  Meanwhile a local "Bobby" appeared at their apartment door, telling Don "About your wife's purse. . . . ." the first Don knew of Julie's problem.  A young girl had found the purse and walked into town to give it to the police station there and they, in turn, alerted the Golders Green police – Julie's typical luck.  In 1975-6 it was to Karlsruhe in Baden, West Germany with the teenagers studying at the Max Planck Gymnasium;  all attended the local Volkshochschule on some weekday evenings to improve their language skills.  During one vacation the family drove the famous Nürburgring in their 1971 Ford 20M sedan;  a top speed of 120 kph scared the driver on the straightaway despite driving higher speeds on the Autobahn.  In the last month, while Kim flew with Luftsportverein Ettlingen, Julie, Kyle and Sean toured from Frankfurt to Amsterdam and Paris finding that five dollars a day did not necessarily work any more.

By the time of Julie's next overseas living effort, the young adults were dispersed.  Kim was learning to be a Bombardier/Navigator for A-6 attack aircraft in the Navy, Kyle was starting her computer science career in southern California and Sean was studying engineering back where he was born.  During 1982-3 and Fall 1984, Julie enjoyed the university town of Göttingen in central West Germany near the East German border.  On Tuesdays she joined a German/International group of ladies walking in the nearby woods (headed to a Gasthaus for Kaffee und Kuchen) and on some weekends she was at the Segelflugplatz of the Fachfluggruppe Göttingen.  A local German friend also initiated her in cross country skiing in the winter.  And finally she had a VW, the Polo-S (as in schnell = fast?) which was the smallest model at the time.  In the summer of 1984 Julie and Don moved to Middletown on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island, to do something different someplace different (usually they rented a former carriage house on Wellington Ave. in Newport in the winter and moved someplace else during the two expensive summer tourist months).  On a part-time basis Julie substituted as a Librarian in the Newport school system and she took education courses at U. Rhode Island to renew her teaching certificate.

Meanwhile Don's Naval Reserve training took Julie to Washington, D. C., Vallejo, Monterey, Pasadena, China Lake and San Diego in California, München (during Oktoberfest) and Pisa/Italy, London/England from Göttingen, White Sands/N.M., South Weymouth/Mass. and NAS Patuxent River/Md.  From the mid '90s to late 2010s Julie regularly joined the reunions of the USS Monssen (DD-798) as a spouse of a (Korean Conflict) shipmate;  early reunions were shared with the WWII crew who played a key role in the Battle of Surigao Strait among other demonstrations of the versatility of a Fletcher class "Tin Can."  These reunions took Julie from San Diego to Jacksonville plus Newport and cities in between.

In 1991 Julie and Don drove west again to enjoy living in Idaho Falls with lots of nice people.  Idaho Falls brought the fun of day and weekend bus trips with the Idaho Falls Ski Club (IFSC) to ski areas having Nordic possibilities.  With the IFSC, Julie joined their European ski tours to Innsbruck in 2002, Bad Gastein/2010 and Zermatt/Switzerland in 2018;  generally Julie carried some Euro coins to assist compatriots needing to use the WC at first stops.  Julie also enjoyed socializing at the Idaho American Nuclear Society dinner meetings (until the virus interfered in 2020).  And in 1995 Sean drove Julie's restored AH from Massachusetts to Idaho Falls so Julie could participate with the Bonneville Austin Healey Club (BAHC) in their drives around the northwest plus their social gatherings.  In January 1996 Julie traveled further west to live in Tokai-mura, Japan for three months, including brief visits to a number of cities in central Honshu plus Sapporo on Hokkaido (and a drive with members of the Japanese AH Club near Yokohama at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning to avoid traffic jams).  In Tokai Julie again joined a group of local ladies and international visitors for pleasant educational discussions as well as helping a couple Japanese children in talking (U.S. American) English.  In August 1997 BAHC hosted the International AH Conclave in Park City, U.  After the Conclave Julie led a post-meeting Northern Rockies tour, which she had organized, to Jackson/Wyo., Canyon Village and Mammoth Hot Springs at Yellowstone National Park, Glacier National Park, Waterton Park in Canada, Dillon/Mont. and back.

On Tuesday, 11 September 2001, teams from al Qaeda attacked the United States, primarily New York and Washington (the Pentagon).  In advance Julie arranged to be in the D.C. area for the day.  On Saturday and Monday Julie and Kim attended First Lady Laura Bush's first National Book Festival at the Library of Congress and an evening Vassar alumni event/dinner at the National Building Museum, respectively.  Tuesday morning Julie was scheduled to fly back west from Washington National Airport after staying overnight at a nearby hotel in Rosslyn, Va.  She planned to take the Metro from Rosslyn past Arlington National Cemetery and the Pentagon to the airport about 0900 EDT.  By chance, she took the Metro in the wrong direction from Rosslyn (the luck of the Irish-named?) and, by the time she was turned around, the Metro system in the area was shut down (as was the US commercial aviation system).  She spent the rest of the day trying to use the disrupted local bus system to get to the airport and spent the night trying to sleep on a sofa in the lobby of a Crystal City hotel.  Wednesday Julie contacted Kyle who alerted  Kim so he could retrieve Julie to enjoy an unexpected visit with Kim and his wife Kim at their southeastern Maryland home.  (Finally by Friday US flights were operating again and Julie managed to fly back west from Baltimore.)

Sometime during 1993 to 2005, while she was walking across South Holmes Ave. en route to her grocery in Idaho Falls, Julie was run over by a pickup truck. At the time a city vehicle with communication capabilities was passing in the opposite direction and, consequently, a city ambulance picked up Julie within a few minutes. She was rushed to the hospital where she woke up eventually. This time she only spent a day or so before escaping from the hospital.  Damages were a few minor broken bones which she did not feel needed repairing.

Starting in December 2005 Julie and Don spent about 2-1/2 years in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, living at the Uni. Stuttgart Gastdozentenhaus – an apartment house for lodging visiting faculty.  Julie again spent some evenings at the local Volkshochschule recovering her Deutsch capabilities and some weekends enjoying walking events (and lunches) at sports clubs in the vicinity.  She joined the Austin Healey Club of Germany (AHCG), participating in Internationales AH Pfingsttreffen (Pentacost weekend meetings) in Heidelberg and Reith, Austria as well as annual weekends at the AH Meeting Sauerland using her VW Golf to "compete" in the driving events.  Monthly dinner meetings of the local Fulbright alumni provided further conviviality and annual Thanksgiving gatherings for a touch of the U. S.  After Stuttgart, Julie and Don spent three summer months in Limerick, Ireland (the wettest summer in 160 years), partly searching for McEligot ancestors, touring SW Ireland and finding the town of Bally MacElligott and (the ruins of) a MacElligott Castle plus one of the MacElligott Bars in the area --- with brother-in-law Keith McEligot's help.  Also of interest was the nearby town of Foynes – the site where Irish Coffee was invented one night during WWII --- and their unique Flying Boat Museum.

Shortly after J+D returned from Germany/Ireland, Leon Wolfram (aka "Wolf") and his wife Robin developed the outstanding Idaho Brewing Company.  Though Julie did not drink beer, she found their Biergarten to be a very pleasant place to relax with a very pleasant clientele while enjoying a low carbohydrate beverage (aka dry white wine).  She returned to her Idaho Falls activities and added Tuesday and Thursday mornings at the Senior Citizen Fit and Fall Proof exercise class;  she improved the class by initiating a coffee klatsch following it.  Her last long Healey tour was with BAHC for a 2012 weekend trip to Zion NP and southern Utah when her usually reliable AH 3000 demonstrated a need for "Click and Clack" (where are they when you need them?);  Tom Sutton later diagnosed it as time to replace points in its SU fuel pump.  In 2014 Julie lived in the Gastdozentenhaus again for seven months and then moved to the Internationales Begegnungszentrum der Wissenschaft München e.V. (IBZ) --- a center for professional visitors to universities in the area --- for three months including the holidays;  their VW Golf during this trip had the license number S-AH61 (S = Stuttgart) to fit in with the local AHCG chapters.  IBZ is conveniently near the Biergarten am Chinesischen Turm in the extensive Englisher Garten (park), one of our favorites.  Earlier IBZ served as Prof. Arnold Sommerfeld's Institute of Theoretical Physics at Uni. München.  In 2016 following a week at Imperial College Summer Accommodations in South Kensington, UK, a week accompanying a couple technical conferences in Sheffield and a long weekend in York, at the end of August  Julie took the train to Windermere for a 3-1/2 day stay in the Lake District finally, only about 46 years and a few months late and with old Don instead of her three school children.  Julie's last trip to Europe was again to IBZ for December 2018-January 2019, conducting informal studies of Christmas markets around town.

Julie's next proposed overseas trip was to Dublin, Ireland, for a couple months but the continuing Covid pandemic has delayed it too long.  For preparation she has been using the Gaelic language --- one word pronounced "slaahn-cha" and written "slainte," meaning "good health" but interpreted by some travel writers as "cheers."

Julie's father and mother both passed away in their 60s so after she turned 70 she felt every day was profit.  Julie was mostly in good physical shape until mid-April 2022, apparently capable of another 5-15 years of fun. After about 2016 she generally followed a moderately-low carbohydrate diet which reduced her weight by about 20-25 lbs and then kept her slim but also is known have a significant diuretic effect.  (She had miscellaneous heart valve diagnoses but they did not bother her, or apparently her Mayo cardiologist – she did not feel them.)  According to Table III of Appendix B in IRS Pub. 590-B her life expectancy was 10.8 years ------> 103 !  Then one day she felt extremely tired and in a state of "inertness" so her doctor arranged blood tests. The next day he recommended reporting to the local hospital emergency room (ER) for anemia, low blood pressure, high heart rate and possible infection.  Julie spent several hours resting and testing at the ER, began to feel better and was discharged with a clinical diagnosis of fatigue, elevated blood heart indicators (BNP and troponin) and a minor conduction problem.  By chance, the next day we realized that--- by mistake --- Julie had been taking a double dose (overdose) of Verapamil for weeks or months so she corrected the dose. This time Julie's luck was not good.  Subsequent activities included many doctors, many nurses, many medications with their many nasty side effects (e.g., amiodarone), many blood tests, some other tests, three more ER visits, three hospital stays, urinary tract infections, likely dehydration, miscellaneous treatments, lengthy bed confinement, sporadic physical therapy, increasing need for supplemental oxygen, frequent discouraging recommendations of hospice, and other complications. When we left her hospital room at about 1930 MDT (7:30 pm) on 26 July she seemed in reasonable shape, sleepy but friendly and responsive;  then about midnight she passed away from  lack of oxygen (we know how but still not why). The death certificate says natural causes.

Julie is survived by her loving husband, Don, younger brother Prof. John P. Albright, M.D., offspring Kim, Kyle and Sean and five grandsons Kevin, Chris, Colin, PJ and Jack McEligot (all with at least 1/16-th Irish blood).  She was preceded in death by her parents and older brother, Prof. James A. Albright, M.D.

With her passing we lost a great person, a great wife, and a great mother and grandmother. While we will sadly miss our lovely, delightful Julie, especially her laugh, we will always have wonderful memories of her to keep her cheer and sparkle alive.

In lieu of flowers, Julie would want donations to go to Head Start, your local food bank or soup kitchen or your local library.

Family, friends and friendly acquaintances of Julie McEligot are cordially invited to an informal Celebration of Julie's Life to be held from 1 pm to 3 pm MDT on Saturday, 29 April 2023, at Idaho Brewing Company, 775 South Capital Ave., Idaho Falls. A short service will begin at about 1:30 pm. Please come prepared to share your Julie tales with others. If you are likely to come, please send an e-mail to RSVP.4McEligots@gmail.com or telephone David Brown at (208)-351-9461 by 22 April so that we have sufficient snacks and beverages for you.  In lieu of flowers, Julie would want donations to go to your local food bank or library.  An obituary is available as https://www.woodfuneralhome.com/obituary/JulimaeJulie-McEligot.