Elisabeth Craig Cockrell

Elisabeth Craig Cockrell

Elisabeth Craig Cockrell passed away Tuesday, August 26, 2008, at the age of 92, at Westminister Canterbury of the Blue Ridge. The world lost a good person.

Beth was always involved with her community. At Westminster Canterbury of the Blue Ridge (WCBR), her home since 1994, she served on residents' committees to keep her hall neighbors informed and the manage-ment up to snuff. The WCBR Mummers plays she produced entertained everyone with adventures of St George and the Dragon, not to mention the fair damsel and quacky doctor. She founded the WCBR play reading group and actively participated for years.

In Waynesboro, Virginia, her home before Westminster Canterbury, she organized neighborhood potluck suppers. Square dance parties for adults and teenagers alike were common in the basement of her home. She loved Western Style Square Dancing so much that during the 1960s she and her husband, the late William D. Cockrell, regularly went out square dancing three nights a week. In fact, when they moved to Waynesboro in 1956, she was delighted they had found a house with a basement "big enough for two squares." Fifty years ago she started the square dance tradition at the Northern Lake George Yacht Club near her summer cabin in Hague, New York, a tradition that still thrives today.

She enriched her Waynes-boro years with an art study group and served as a docent for the local chapter of the Virginia Museum of Fine Art.

She loved live theater, especially Community Theater. While she preferred to work backstage with the Waynesboro Players or at the Oak Grove Theater in Verona, Va, she did occasionally play a role on stage. She was a strong supporter of the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express from their humble beginning in Harrisonburg and attended opening night in their beautiful Blackfriars Theater in Staunton. For many years, she brought them to WCBR on her birthday to perform for the residents. (William Shakespeare, coincidentally, always celebrated his birthday the day before.) After moving to Charlottesville she fell in love with Live Arts. Who wouldn't? She worked on the play selection committee and attended performances there until a couple months ago.

She traveled all over the world, taking friends and family with her. When she wasn't physically traveling, she was traveling in her mind through her life long passion for reading mystery novels. When the Olympic games came around she proudly wore the gold medal her father, Ralph Craig, had won in the 100-meter dash in the 1912 Olympics. (Her brother wears the gold medal Ralph won for the 200-meter dash.)

She found great community in the congregations of St John's Episcopal Church in Waynesboro and Grace Episcopal Church in Keswick, Virginia.

She was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1916 and moved to Albany, New York, at age eight. She graduated from Vassar College in 1937 and worked at Aetna Insurance Co. and later General Electric in Schenectady, New York, as a secretary.

She raised two sons, David Craig Cockrell, now in Oneida, New York, and Robert Cockrell Craighurst of Charlottesville. She's "Grandma" to Scott Disbrow, Kerris Cockrell, Anna Laura Craighurst and Lily Zhou-Mei Ji. Caleb Disbrow and Gabrielle Disbrow know her as "Great Grandma". Her brother, Bruce Craig, still lives in Hague, New York.

A service to celebrate her life will be held 7 p.m. Wednes-day, September 10, 2008, at the WCBR Chapel in Charlottesville, followed by a dessert reception.

In lieu of flowers please send donations to Live Arts (123 East Water St, Charlottesville, VA 22902).

She was a great lady. She will be missed by many.


This obituary was originally published in the News Virginian.