Monica Eldred

Monica Eldred was born 102 years ago during the administration of Warren Harding to Waleryan (Walter) Moleronek and the former Kazimira (Katherine) Stickeiwicz on May 5, 1922 in Cambridge Massachusetts. Her parents were immigrants from Lithuania and Poland respectively, who’d married in 1911.
She had two elder sisters, Emma and Edna, and soon a younger brother; Alexander. The family moved to Framingham where she grew up. Monica was artistically gifted, athletic and played softball and basketball as well. After she graduated from Framingham High School she took classes at the Worcester Art Museum and Boston Museum of Art while rooming in Boston with two other young artists.  They lived a somewhat bohemian life on Boylston Street and mingled with an international set that included the future ambassador from Egypt.
She loved dancing and the big band jazz music of the time and met fellow jazz enthusiast Richard Eldred of Longmeadow. They’d attend clubs like Savoy Cafe, Roseland Ballroom, Hi-Hat, Storyville as well as venues outside the city.  
At the age of 28 she married Richard on Oct. 19, 1950 at St. Johns Church in Washington D.C.where he was working on the UNIVAC computer. They moved back to Massachusetts so he could work for Honeywell and lived briefly in Westwood, Bellingham and then finally Waban in Newton where she raised two sons, Richard and Peter.  She retained her interest in art, doing oil paintings, stained glass and after studying with Mary Azarian creating wood block prints for her own Christmas cards.  After she was widowed in 1969 she raised her sons alone. When they went to college she moved to Orleans on Cape Cod in 1979 to be closer to her sisters and lived there rest of her life.
In 1962 she’d discovered that a home in Morgan Vermont on Lake Seymour where she’s spent wonderful summers as an art student painting local scenes was for sale and convinced her husband to buy it. For the next 62 years she’d spend parts of every summer in Morgan, visiting for the last time in July of 2024 when she got to see her neighbors and friends.  
While she raised her children she pursued interest in rock collecting traveling to road cuts and mines with a pick in hand and her fellow rock hound Jean Butterworth.
She never gave up oil painting working on canvases until she was past 90 becoming more impressionistic as time passed and her eyesight faded.
On Cape Cod she joined the Appalachian Mountain Club and made many friends hiking twice a week. She also hiked with the Eastham Hiking group led by her friend Hortense Kelly. On club trips to the White Mountains they climbed Mt Moosilauke and she hosted her friends from the AMC at her home in Vermont while they explored the mountains of the Northeast Kingdom. Monica continued hiking well into her eighties and took up cross country skiing in her 70’s.
Her outside activities slowed when she was in her nineties but she attended the 90th birthday of one her her artists roommates from her days in Boston, Ellie Mintz Blank, and they both continued to visit Vermont where they’d summered in the 1940’s.
Monica always loved the old movies of her youth, The African Queen was her favorite, and she watched old VHS tapes at home purchased at the the thrift shops she frequented. When the music moved her she’d still get up to dance to her beloved big band jazz when she was past 100.
She passed away at the Pleasant Bay Nursing and Rehab Center in Brewster on Sept.25, several weeks after a fall at home. She leaves her two sons, Richard and Peter, Peter’s wife Rosemary and daughter Helen, two nephews and four grand nephews. She was predeceased by her sisters and brother and a niece and nephew. A celebration of life will be held Nov. 23 in Natick.