Eleanor Maker Voortmeyer died on May 9, 2007, in Fairfield, California, shortly before her 89th birthday. She was laid to rest beside her husband, William Bertus Voortmeyer, in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California.

Eleanor was born in Bakersfield, California on June 29, 1918, the firsborn daughter of Ray and Clara Maker. When she was two years old, she moved with her parents to 3317 Elliot Street, in Oakland none block from Oakland High School. Here, she grew into a beautiful young woman, and in her sophomore year at Oakland High, she met the love of her life, Bert Voortmeyer. It was 1933, and she was fifteen years old.

Bert, a senior, sat in front of her in Biology class and when she first set eyes on him she was determined to marry him. She knew without question who and what she wanted out of life. She wanted to be his wife and the mother of his children. She was beautiful and vivacious. She was fun-loving and flirtatious but her friends knew that she was "a sailor's girl" who spent her nights at home writing long letters to her love, while he girdled the globe on small freighters during summers and after his graduation, in 1936. He took her to his Senior Prom (she was sixteen years old) and on her graduation in January, 1936, he sent her a congratulatory telegram from Wake Island, where he was working for Pan American Airways. Because he was away, she didn't go to her Senior Prom. It was just one of many sacrifices she would make for love over the years.

After graduation she worked as a salesgirl in Capwells, a job she enjoyed because she was always eager to help people. However, her life as a working girl was brief. On August 20, 1937 she and Bert were married and she loved being a homemaker in the small apartment near Lake Merritt. In 1939, the first of five daughters was born. In 1941, they bought a small house in San Bruno, where she would have been happy to have lived her entire life, near family and friends, but she had married a wanderer and fate had other plans for her. In 1942, while serving on a transport ship, Bert accepted a commission in the U.S. Army and suddenly she was an Army wife. During WWII she raised two small children by herself. It would not be the last time she would raise her children alone while he was on assignment overseas.

As a military wife, she mastered the protocol and learned to cope with anything and everything that came her way, and to do it alone. She was faithful and feisty and she never faltered, no matter how difficult or frustrating the situation. In 1964, she took 35 people into her two bedroom log cabin when an 8.1 earthquake devastated the town of Seward, Alaska. For a week she cooked, cleaned, and kept up everyone's spirits. She never hesitated to meet a challenge, to the extent of climbing Seward's Mt. Marathon when she wasn't a hiker, much less a mountain climber. But she did it for love, as she did everything.

She loved to dance and she could, and often did, dance the night away. She had great legs and with her dark hair and dark eyes she was a glory to behold in a red dress and red high heels. Although she never had a lesson, she could play all the songs of the 1930s and 40s on the piano by ear. She was a homemaker par excellence who could make a mean enchilada, keep an immaculate house and, after running herd on five children all day attend an Officer's Reception looking like a Greek goddess.

She could have been a professional dancer, a photographer (she loved taking candid photos of her family), or a writer. In a letter she could make a trip on the Brooklyn subway seem like a passage to India. She could have been a movie star because she was beautiful and talented, but what she desired was to be 'a good wife and mother.' That she was, and more. She was an example to her daughters of the virtue of unselfishness, and of total commitment. She was the proverbial woman behind the successful man who allowed him the accolades. She polished his military insignias and never questioned her own rank. She caught a sailfish in Panama Bay, when he caught nothing, and she earned a higher score than he did on the Power Squadron course (for small boats). Rather than boast, she gave him the credit for helping her. She knew what mattered, and it wasn't rank, or the biggest fish or the best test score. It was family.

During the last ten years of her life, she bravely faced her fiercest adversary, Alzheimer's Disease. She fought the battle without complaint, sometimes with a wry remark, and always with a smile. It was the style with which she met every challenge. In those last years, she asked for but one thing. Having spent most of her life in faraway places, she wished to return to her beloved California to be near family. In 1999, she and Bert bought a home in Rio Vista, on the Sacramento River, where two of their daughters lived. Even when she could no longer care for herself, she did her best to care for her husband. Bert Voortmeyer died on February 8, 2005. He and Eleanor had been married for 67 years. They are now re-united.

Eleanor is survived by her five daughters: Carol Nickisher, Patricia Bryte Lynch, Lani Arrendondo, Trina Lee, Valerie Crocker, ten grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.