Elinor Wilensky Tannenbaum, 96

A Brooklynite by birth, Elinor Wilensky Tannenbaum was a longtime Five Towns resident who immersed herself in the area through her career as a teacher and an involved community member.
Tannenbaum died in Bloomfield, Conn., where she had been living for the past three years, on Sept. 2. She was 96.
Born in 1919 to Simon and Essie Wilensky, Tannenbaum lived in Hewlett for 60 years, taught fourth grade at Woodmere Elementary School in Woodmere (now the Woodmere Education Center) from 1960 to 1980, was a 40-year member of the Lawrence Yacht & Country Club, a member of the Lawrence-based National Council of Jewish Women, Peninsula Section and the Center for Adult Life Enrichment (CALE). She attended services at Temple Emanu-el in Lynbrook. The synagogue merged with Temple Sinai in Cedarhurst a few years back and became Temple Am Echad.
Two years after earning bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1939, Elinor married David Tannenbaum. Married for 54 years and they had three children. David, a certified public accountant, died in 1995. Twenty years after receiving her bachelor’s, Tannenbaum got a master’s degree from Hofstra University.
Sunday breakfast at the Valbrook Diner in Valley Stream with her lifelong friends was Tannenbuam’s favorite activity, when living in Hewlett, according to her son, Lewis Tannenbaum. “Our husbands went to college together,” said Irene Lowenbraun, who know Elinor for more than 70 years and shared a bagel platter with her during those morning meals. “She was a wonderful person, who helped everyone.”

When Elinor taught in Woodmere her favorite place to go for lunch with fellow educators was the Cottage Coffee Shop on Broadway in Woodmere, Lewis said. Another one of her traditions was going with Lewis to the White Castle by the Lynbrook Long Island Railroad station. She had coffee, while her son ate.
Not one to sit around, Tannenbaum played tennis, golf, skied, swam and created and taught the flexercise class for 25 years at the Five Towns Center Senior, now CALE in Hewlett. “ I remember her as a bright, creative woman,” said Joan Riegel, who worked with Elinor at the NCJW. “Some of our best young members were recruited by Elinor at the Hewlett High School pool.”
Tannenbaum loved the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. She attended high definition simulcasts at a local theater in Connecticut, rooted for the Mets and Jets and went to the U.S. Tennis Open at Forest Hills before the tournament shifted to Flushing Meadows.
She visited Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and taught a semester in Maidstone, England. Tannenbaum journeyed to Berlin shortly after Germany’s reunification “Mom had a great photographic memory. She had the ability to visualize wherever she visited,” Lewis said. “Mom studied languages before traveling, to become familiar with other cultures.”
Her husband’s military service brought them to Pittsburgh in 1943, where she caught a glimpse of early greatness: Leonard Bernstein, then 25, in concert. “She followed his career from then on,” Lewis said.
In addition to Lewis and his wife, Jane; Tannenbaum is survived by daughters Ruth Benanav and her husband, Gary, and Dr. Susan Tannenbaum and her spouse Katherine Wilson; grandchildren Michael Benanav and his wife, Kelly; Tami Benavav Corro and her husband, Jorge; and Steven Benanav and his wife, Tina; and Julia Tannenbaum and Nick Tannenbaum; and great-grandchildren David Corro, Sara Corro, Luke Benanav and Mila Benanav.
A graveside service was held at New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon on Sept. 6.
“She always said, ‘exercise and a good diet will keep you health,’” Lewis said.