WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Eleanor Whitney Montgomery left the world peacefully and quietly on May 27, 2026, surrounded by her four devoted children, in the house she had called home for 94 years. 

Eleanor was born in New York City on March 7th, 1932. She was adopted as an infant by Col. and Mrs. Maurice Whitney, and fate brought her to a sprawling farmstead in Berlin, NY for her childhood. She attended high school at St. Mary's-in-the-Mountains Episcopal School in Bethlehem, NH, after which, for a gap year, she took her first of many trips abroad to serve as an au pair in Belgium. Upon returning to the United States, Eleanor majored in French at Smith College in Northampton, MA. While studying abroad in Paris her junior year, she met a fellow American who became her life partner and mate; Eleanor married Austin Philips Montgomery, Jr. later that year in December 1953.

Motherhood came quickly thereafter. Eleanor gave birth to daughter Susan in October 1954, then daughter Martha, son Austin, and finally daughter Alice in 1959. The role of mother befitted her exquisitely, and she was passionate about her brood. The family spent their first years in Concord, NH, before Austin the elder, a private school headmaster, accepted the role at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg, VA in 1961.

It was there that Eleanor and Austin laid a foundation of principled moral conviction, progressivism, and staying true to one's core values that they passed down to the next generations of the family. The school admitted its first African-American students in 1967, an experiment with integration in the American South during one of the most racially charged periods in American history. 

There was considerable pushback from parents, alumni, board members, and students. Austin, and by extension Eleanor, held significant influence as to whether the integration would succeed or fail. In the face of harsh criticism, risk of enrollment declines and financial consequences, Austin and Eleanor acted on what they believed was the morally just position, and supported these young enrollees any way they could. While the students succeeded, ultimately this conflict led to Austin's departure from V.E.S. 

Eleanor left a wake of literacy everywhere she went. She volunteered at the library for decades, served on the Library and School boards, and spent thousands of hours reading to her children, and then her grandchildren, and then her great grandchildren. She volunteered for years as a reading teacher at the local elementary school and taught illiterate adults to read.

For years, Eleanor sang beautifully in the choir at St John's Episcopal Church in Williamstown.

There was not a crying baby she could not calm, not a stain she could not get out, not a 2-letter Scrabble word she could not deploy at just the right time to secure victory.

Due to a chance encounter with a 23 and Me test kit as a birthday gift, Eleanor found and met her birth siblings for the first time in her late 80s. She cherished the handful of weekends she spent with Peter and Sandra in Berlin, New York City, and Poughkeepsie.  While these relationships did not begin until the final act of Eleanor's life, the closure they represented made her peacefully whole.

Eleanor is survived by the entirety of her clan, and her passing will leave a matriarch-sized void for all of them: four children, one daughter-in-law, eight grandchildren, six grand-spouses, eight great-grandchildren in all. 

Everyone who was lucky enough to know her will miss her dearly.  May she rest in eternal peace.

Service will be held Sunday, June 21st at 2:00pm at St. John's Williamstown.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her memory to Wheels on Meals or your local library.