Eleanor Floyd

Eleanor Higgins Floyd, one of twelve children of a Parkville farmer who endured the Depression and helped the 1940s war effort as a “Rosie the Riveter” in Kansas City, died on March 20 after a short illness. She was 87. “Ellie,” as she was known to family, was witness to and participant in the great changes that shaped the twentieth century, joining the migration from farm to city, marrying a local radio personality and then raising six children in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. Lacking a formal education, she was whip-smart, an unbeatable Scrabble player and, while deeply committed to family and generous to a fault, someone who didn’t suffer fools gladly. Born on a farm in Parkville on June 26, 1924, Eleanor was the middle of twelve children and in her youngest years recalled seeing her older sisters ride off by horseback to bring water to hired hands who were helping to harvest the family crops. A fire later cost the family the farm and began its slow but steady move to the city. She attended East High School in Kansas City, but was forced quit to help support the family and took a job at Kline’s Department store. The job at Kline’s proved fateful for it was there that a friend introduced her to a former high school classmate and future love of her life, Robert Floyd. The couple were engaged in the summer of 1941. But that winter, in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Robert Floyd enlisted in the Marines and left to fight in the Pacific. During the war, Ellie held a succession of jobs related to the war effort, first at an American Aviation plant, then at Aluminum Co. of America and finally as a key punch operator at IBM. Bob Floyd returned from the war three years later and the couple was married on February 1, 1946. He attended radio school and eventually was hired at KIMO in Independence, later moving on to KCKN where for a time he became the on-air radio personality Bob Courtney. In later years he was an advertising manager at a several Kansas City area radio stations. The couple celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary February 3, 1996. Robert Floyd died a year later. She is survived by five of her twelve siblings, Fay McDaniel, Jody Cloverdyke Annie Oliphant, Dudley Higgins, and Colleen Fortner; five of her six children: Robert Courtland Floyd, Jr. and wife, Karen Sue Floyd; Joycellen Floyd, M.D., and husband, Jack Fischer: Joellen Lucas and husband, David Lucas; Jeffery Floyd and wife, Jamie Lee Floyd; and Elliot Storms Floyd and wife, Karen Floyd; seventeen grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren. A sixth child, Michael Benjamin Floyd, died in 1992. The family asks that donations in Eleanor’s memory be made to Odyssey Vista Care Hospice Foundation, 717 North Harwood, Suite 1500, Dallas, Texas 75201.