“I believe in working! Who wants to stay home and clean house?”

Working outside the home gives you the opportunity to meet people, do things, exercise your mind, and make lasting friendships. Her father used to say that nothing bored him more than women who talked only about their children and the “help.” He encouraged her and her mother to pursue their interests.

Eleanor still belongs “a loosely organized group of ex-editors” who meet periodically at a restaurant in the Valley. They periodically invite members of the current Los Angeles Times staff of editors to come to speak to them.

She is grateful that while her children were growing up, she was able to maintain her career and have a family life because of a wonderful housekeeper named Irene. Irene, who was from Texas, was with her for fourteen years. Irene had also worked for Eleanor’s mother. Her mother did not baby sit for Eleanor’s boys. (After all, she had raised four children of her own and now she worked full time in real estate.) Irene was an African American woman who did not know her own age because in the little Texas town in which she grew up, they did not keep records on people of color.