Lou Ellyn was born September 30, 1949 in Mount Clemens, Michigan. She lived in Michigan, California, Florida and Ohio. She moved from Mansfield, Ohio to Chelsea, Michigan in 2013.
In Mansfield, she was part of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship where she found community and a sense of well-being.
In Chelsea, Lou Ellyn’s professional and personal community centered around the Chelsea Senior Center where she developed deep friendships. Lou Ellyn worked as the Office Manager and accountant there alongside her dear friend, Trinh Pifer. Lou Ellyn and Jim Heaton met at the Chelsea Senior Center where Jim volunteered teaching computer classes to numerous residents. Their friendship grew on many long walks around Chelsea and Dexter and on Ferris wheel rides at the Chelsea Community Fair and visits to the Chelsea Farmers Market.
Lou Ellyn shared her long history of water bird watching with Jim at Pierce Lake and at the four ponds on the corner of Scio Church Road and Parker Road. Some of the birds they encountered included Sandhill Cranes, both migrating and summer time versions, some Great Snowy Egrets, Great Blue Herons, and Trumpeter Swans, an endangered species. Early summer was a special time to see the young ones. Lou Ellyn and Jim married in the summer of 2018.
Lou Ellyn attended Michigan State University and then pursued opportunities to learn programming in the early 1970s following the encouragement of her Roosevelt High School math teacher, Joanne Rankin, Ypsilanti, Michigan. Lou Ellyn programmed bank loan systems and taught banking administrators how the new systems worked and would enhance their operations. She was at various times a computer programmer, system analyst, project manager, product manager, and a software company entrepreneur with her late husband. All this at a time when programming and banking were both the purview of men. She held her own in the field for many years. Her work was highly respected.
Inclusion has always been part of Lou Ellyn’s life. She grew up in Michigan with her parents, Jean Green (McIntosh) and Lewis Green, her sister, Sharyl and her brother, Lester. Social issues were always part of the discussion including living through the Civil Rights Movement together and attending the Northwest Unitarian Universalist Church.
Along with being a stellar math and computer professional, Lou Ellyn was also a word wizard. Her skills in Anagrams and Scrabble were hard to beat, and she may have been the world’s fastest Jumble word-scrambler. She loved sorting and solving, encoding and decoding words as well as numbers.
Lou Ellyn is predeceased by her parents and her brother. She is survived by her husband, Jim Heaton, her father’s wife, Mary Green also of Chelsea, her sister, Sharyl Green and Sharyl’s husband, Peter Lackowski of Vermont, their son, Aaron Lackowski, and his partner, Mireya Murillo, Lou Ellyn’s beloved nephew and niece. Lou Ellyn’s influence is carried on through her many friends and numerous cousins.
A Memorial Service, a celebration of Lou Ellyn’s life, will be held at the Staffan-Mitchell Funeral Home, Chelsea on Saturday, November 20, 2021 at 11:00 a.m., where the family will receive friends from 10:00 a.m. until the time of service
Donations in Lou Ellyn’s honor can be made to the Chelsea Senior Center or the Arbor Hospice Foundation.
