Elsa Bondar
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Elsa Bondar, 89, of Washington, died peacefully Friday, February 9, 2018, in Asbury Heights, Pittsburgh.
Born August 4, 1928, in Chicago, Ill., she was a daughter of the late Elsa Wolkenhauer and Joseph Schmieger.
Graduating from Steinmetz High School in Chicago in 1945, and from Northwestern University with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1949, she began her career by teaching sixth grade and music at Lincoln Elementary School in Chicago Public Schools. In 1957, she married Eugene “Gene” Bondar, also of Chicago, and they led a canoe trip to Quetico Provincial Park in Canada for their honeymoon. Pursuing Gene’s academic career, they lived in Joliet, Ill., Syracuse, N.Y., and Kisii, Kenya, before settling in Grand Island, N.Y., in 1968.
She taught fifth grade for many years at both Sidway and Kaegebein Elementary Schools in the Grand Island Public School System, and she completed a master’s degree in education at Buffalo State College in 1976. After retiring from teaching in 1994, she helped to coordinate the Buffalo Niagara League of Women Voters until she and Gene moved to Washington in 2015 to live near their daughter Carol and son Gregory.
In her youth, she enjoyed playing music, hiking, canoeing and skiing, including a climb of the Grand Teton in Wyoming, and rafting through the Grand Canyon in 1956, and she was very active leading trips for American Youth Hostels. Throughout her life, she loved to travel, visiting all 50 United States, as well as Europe and the Caribbean, and she lived from 1966 to 1967 in Kenya, Africa, with Gene and their children. At home on Grand Island, she enjoyed gardening, attending Buffalo Philharmonic concerts and exploring geology with Buffalo Geological Society, leading many school field trips to collect fossils.
She is survived by Eugene, her husband of 60 years; their children, Douglas (Angelika) Bondar of Augusta, Ga., Carol (Samuel) Johnson of McMurray and Gregory (Elisa) Bondar of Greensburg; and grandchildren, Susanna, Alexander and Erika Bondar, and Noel and Bradley Johnson. She was the sister of the late Anna Schmieger of Chicago.
The staffs of Strabane Trails Village of Washington, Asbury Heights of Pittsburgh and Family Hospice and Palliative Care of Pittsburgh provided skilled and compassionate care.
A family celebration of her life will be held in the summer. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations should be made to the League of Women Voters, https://www.lwv.org, or the National Parks Foundation, https://www.nationalparks.org.