Clara Eckdall

Clara Regina Maurycy Eckdall was born in Schenectady, New York, in 1918, to Polish immigrant parents, Josephine, nee Draus, and Jan Maurycy. She was the youngest of seven children in a family devoted to education and a better life in the United States. Her father had been a blacksmith and her mother a head cook on an estate in Poland and they owned a meat market/grocery store in Schenectady, which was later run by her brother.

She graduated high school, with honors when she was 16, and then Ellis Hospital of Nursing in Schenectady. Clara did post-graduate work in surgery at Polyclinic, Columbia-Presbyterian Nursing School, in New York City, where she met Dr. Funston Eckdall, a resident in surgery. They married three days after Pearl Harbor while she was working and doing additional graduate work at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. Dr. Eckdall was drafted and when Capt. Eckdall was sent to the South Pacific Clara moved back to Schenectady with her eldest daughter. After the war they moved to Emporia, so that Dr. Eckdall could set up his practice alongside that of his father, Dr. F. A. Eckdall.

Clara raised five daughters who graduated college, and most went on to advanced degrees in nursing, art, and/or education. Her primary focus was the education of her daughters, and as she became a widow when Dr. Eckdall died in 1969, the rearing and education of her three youngest daughters became her sole responsibility. Education remained a primary focus as she devoted countless hours to volunteer work as in those days women, especially doctor's wives, were expected to volunteer and not be paid. Her curriculum vitae (c.v.) is over four pages single-spaced.

In Emporia she was either a member of an advisory board, President or Chairperson of over 22 organizations with emphasis on the Advisory Board on Practical Nursing, the Board of Education, vocational education, the PTA, and the Lyon County Educational Survey. She established many organizations including but not limited to the Newman Memorial Hospital and Medical Auxiliary. She was community minded and then took her concerns to the state level and became the first woman President of Kansas Association of School Boards. Clara was the representative for the Governor's Conference Education Committee and went to the White House representing Kansas regarding federal aid to education.

From 1958 to 1977 she served on nearly forty state committees on nursing, education, PTA, vocational schools, drug abuse and alcoholism, mental health, junior colleges, master teacher, nursing homes, and nursing aides. She was often the chairperson or primary advisor to these committees and so knowledgeable on these subjects and the state legislature that Gov. Bennett twice asked her to be co-chair of his election committee. Clara served on the state Fulbright committee for eight years and was the first lay-person elected to the Kansas Healing Arts Board.

Her interest in education was elevated to the national level when she served on many panels of the National School Boards Association, was a trustee of mid-continent Regional Education Laboratory as well as the Kansas representative for support of public education.

Clara never lost her interest in education, nursing, and politics and maintained a lifelong involvement in her community. She was instrumental in establishing a public municipal golf course and club house. Clara was a stalwart sports fan of everything Emporia and Kansas with special emphasis on KU basketball, 'Rock Chalk Jayhawk', and the KC Royals, even in her last hours, asking... “what's the score?” In 2007 Emporia's 150th Commemorative Book listed her among 150 years of Notable People.

Throughout her extraordinary life she was renowned for great cooking, concern for friends and neighbors, consummate bridge playing, and great sense of humor. She loved to give great parties of all kinds. Although she could be opinionated and bossy she was always able to laugh and make others laugh. Thankfully, this remarkable sense of humor was passed on to her daughters. Clara Eckdall was an extremely intelligent woman, a voracious reader, highly independent and so far ahead of her time in so many diverse ways.

Above all else, she was a great mother. She deeply loved her daughters and her eight grandchildren and was great-grandmother of 12 and great-great-grandmother of two. She was the last of her siblings to survive. She leaves behind her children and their spouses as well as the previously mentioned eight grandchildren. Roberta Berg, Susan and Ralph Cinfio, Cathy Eckdall, and Susan Freedner, Jan and Geary Grantham, Karen and Richard Damon, as well as their children Robert Berg, Camy Cinfio, Lisa Schwartz, Ralph Cinfio III, Jay Grantham, Drew Grantham, Alexander Estabrook and Andrew Estabrook.

There will be a private graveside service. The family extends an invitation for friends to join them to celebrate Clara's life and share stories at a reception on Tuesday, October 28, 2014, from 3:30 – 5:30 p.m., at the Greenbriar Estates Clubhouse.

To honor Clara's life, in lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to either the Emporia State University Foundation, Department of Nursing, in Memory of Clara M. Eckdall or Emporia Public Library Homebound Program in care of Roberts-Blue-Barnett Funeral Home. To order memorial trees or send flowers to the family in memory of Clara Eckdall, please visit our flower store.