Eliane Koeves passed away peacefully in Chester on Feb. 13 at the age of 102. Her life was lived with courage and appetite, as well as a deep understanding and love for art, poetry, and nature. Her favorite description of her multi-faceted story was “Things just happened to me.” Laughter and a positive attitude allowed Eliane to face calamitous or life-threatening situations. She remained in love with life and her delightful sense of humor prevailed even in her last painful moments. With her training as a nurse and a laboratory assistant, she did not hesitate, up to the very end, to tell the doctors what her body was suffering from and the medicine it needed. She knew when it was time simply to say goodbye.
Born on Oct. 13, 1914, in France, Eliane lost her father to World War I; her French mother remarried an American and brought the family to the United States. Educated in convents both in France and America, her life was in constant flux at the whim of parents or teachers. Once free of those constraints, she began to travel the world, always in search of new experiences and greater knowledge. An inner force drove her to serve with the French Ambulance Service in World War II; she insisted she was continuing her family military tradition.
Initially traveling by troopship to Algiers, she was later attached to a division of the US Seventh Army as it advanced through Italy after the battles of Monte Cassino and Anzio. She worked in field hospitals behind the front lines. Trilingual in French, Spanish, and English, she became interpreter to many generals and was asked to assume the role of French Consul in Leghorn until a political appointee could be chosen when the war came to an end. After the war ended, Eliane was a lexicographer for the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal during the formative years of the United Nations.
In 1950 Eliane married the “love of her life” Tibor Koeves, a Hungarian writer and travel editor of the United Nations World. After several years living in New York City and Westchester County, Eliane and Tibor decided to move permanently to Mallorca, off the Mediterranean coast of Spain. In 1979 Eliane came to Chester after her husband’s death. She devoted herself to charity work and good causes, studied calculus, used the Internet, continued art lessons, and created her special garden complete with fishpond built by her own hand. At the age of 75, she volunteered for the Peace Corps and worked tirelessly in Haiti and Guatemala on behalf of orphans and the sick.
Eliane is survived by her sister-in-law Barbara Delaney; nephews Nicholson “Nick” Delaney, Morgan Hare, and Ogden Goelet; nieces Deidre Cohane and Topher Delaney; great-nephews Liam and Morgan Delaney; and great-nieces Maia and Samantha Hare, and Meagan, Nicole, and Alison Delaney. Family gatherings were important moments in Eliane’s long life and she will be greatly missed by family and friends alike.
As Eliane desired, there will be no funeral service and her body was cremated. Her remains will be privately buried by her family. A celebration of Eliane’s life is anticipated in June in Chester. Donations in memory of Eliane may be made to Doctors Without Borders, 333 7th Ave., New York, NY 10001-5004, www.doctorswithoutborders.org. To share a memory of Eliane or send a condolence to her family, please visit www.rwwfh.com.
