GADON, Elinor (Weiner)

Elinor Gadon, 92, died peacefully at her home in Cambridge, MA on May 8th. Born on September 17, 1925 to Maurice H. Weiner and Jean (Kaplan) Weiner, Elinor grew up in Reading, where her parents were the proprietors of Weiner’s Men’s Clothing store on Penn Street. She graduated from Reading High School in 1942 and from the University of Michigan in 1945. She later obtained her doctorate in History of Culture from the University of Chicago.

As an art historian specializing in the art and culture of India, she taught at Harvard, Tufts and the California Institute of Integral Studies, and held an appointment as a Life Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center. Her 1989 book, The Once and Future Goddess, became an essential text for the women’s spirituality and Goddess movements, and for college courses on Women and Mythology around the world. She was the recipient of the Honor Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts from the Women’s Caucus for Art, and of the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology.

She was the beloved mother of Nicole (Linda) Gadon of Asheville, NC, Margaret Gadon of Cambridge, MA and John Gadon of Portland, Oregon. She was predeceased by her beloved son, William. She also leaves much-adored grandsons, Eliot and Nicholas Brown and Scott Kelly, nieces and nephew, John and Peggy Freedson, and grand-nieces and nephews, Sammy, Anita, James and Ava.

Funeral services will be held graveside at Kesher Zion Cemetery in Shillington at 2pm on Friday, May 11th.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent in her memory to the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center.