English professor and reproductive rights advocate. Her Funds at The Trust support reproductive health care and programs for the visually impaired.
Deborah B. Elkins (1911-2002)
“The battles to gain women’s access to reproductive freedom are far from over,” Deborah Elkins shared her passion for these issues in a 1993 letter to The New York Community Trust. “The struggle will have to be fought on the legal fronts in order to attain universality. To achieve this means education of lawmakers, of policymakers, of professional educators as well as the public at large.
“A multitude of challenges to the rights of women to reproductive freedom have been in evidence,” the Queens College professor wrote, “among them the Title X ‘gag rule,’ sectarian ‘chastity’ programs, all manner of punitive proposals and measures against women, against reproductive privacy. The ability of women to control their lives is at stake.”
Deborah established a fund in The Trust that supported nonprofits such as National Institute for Reproductive Health, Planned Parenthood of New York City, New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation, and Safe Horizons.
Deborah Elkins was born December 16, 1911, in New Britain, Connecticut. Her mother, Rose Dubowy Elkins, and her father, Jacob, immigrated from Russia. He delivered milk for a local dairy to support his wife and four daughters, Gertrude, Deborah, Vivian, and Henrietta or “Henny.”
She earned her bachelor’s degree from Central Connecticut State University, a master’s from Trinity College in 1941, and a doctorate from the University of Connecticut in 1955. She taught in Connecticut public schools before becoming a professor of education at Queens College. In the mid-1950s, she moved to an apartment on West End Avenue in Manhattan.
A loved educator, friend, colleague, philanthropist, and author, Deborah was a dynamo with a magnetic personality and an insatiable appetite for life and learning, her Queens College colleagues wrote in a tribute after her death in 2002.
In 1968, Deborah reviewed the book English and the Disadvantaged by Edward R. Fagan for The Journal of Reading. In her review, she examined themes she found “worthy” and that still resonate today. “First,” she wrote, “we must eliminate our irrelevant courses of study and substitute those which will help students achieve their task of ‘making sense out of their lives.’ Second, to help students ‘become deeply involved in their own learning,’ it is necessary to integrate art and music into the study of language and literature.” Demonstrating foresight, she concluded, “We must make use of mass media, especially TV, and ‘electronic’ equipment, such as the tape recorder.”
Dr. Deborah B. Elkins retired from Queens College in 1979 as professor emerita, but her teaching career wasn’t over. In 1984, she accepted a one-year assignment to teach English at Huazhong University in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in The People’s Republic of China.
In addition to her own fund, Deborah established a second fund in The Trust as a memorial to her older sister, Gertrude, who died in 1993. “I am particularly interested in … organizations that provide the blind greater access to the world of the sighted,” she said. The Gertrude Elkins Memorial Fund has helped visually impaired New Yorkers prepare for jobs, vote, use adaptive devices, navigate public transportation, run marathons, and more.
Deborah died October 3, 2002, at age 90.