Elinor Soja Miller, former DeSales Heights teacher and historian of Church-Hiteshew Victorian on Ann Street, died December 20, 2024 of dementia-related illness at Orchard Ridge Retirement Village in Winchester, Virginia. She was born in December of 1930 to Michael L. and Alice Haider in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where her father worked as a petroleum engineer.
Ellie attended the Betty Rombaugh School in Tulsa until her father’s promotion with Standard Oil of New Jersey took her and her family to New York. She graduated from Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, spent two years at Denison University in Ohio before graduating from Connecticut College and, a year later, from the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. In the 1940s, Ellie and her parents spent summers at Chatham on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It was there that Ellie got her first job, that of working at the Mattaquason Hotel. Some of her happiest times were spent working summers there with people her age, and after hours partying with them at Sad Sack’s Snack Shack.
In 1953, Ellie married West Point graduate Lieutenant Eugene Soja. One of his first posts was to Bad Nauheim, Germany. Ellie was there three years and often spoke of what she witnessed of post-war Germany. In 1954, her first child, Michael Soja, was born. A daughter, Constance M. Soja, was born a year later. In July 1956, Ellie and her two children sailed from Germany on their return to the United States by way of New York. Ellie could remember the constant blaring of fog horns on the trip. That same fog victimized the luxury liner Andrea Doria on her fateful voyage, also in July of 1956…