AN EXTRAOrDINARY LIFE

Painting was Joliet woman's passion

Family friends often approached self-taught oil painter Eleanor Lajcin with a photograph and the request, 'Can you paint this for me?'"

And for 30 years Eleanor did.

"She was very easy-going. I don't know how many paintings she did and gave away," said Eleanor's son, Daniel Lajcin, of Joliet. "Of course, I've got three or four of her oil paintings. There's one of a mother bear and her cubs, one of a landscape along a lake and one of a bobcat."

Eleanor was 92 when she died July 29.

As a little girl, the partially deaf Eleanor loved to draw and yearned to attend art school. But her family could not afford the expense, so Eleanor contented herself with creating charcoal still lifes and portraits, such as the one of Shirley Temple her daughter, Janet Ross of Florida, owns.

For a time, Eleanor attended a school for the hearing impaired, but her family was not satisfied with the program since it placed greater emphasis on lip reading than sign language.

Through a mutual friend, Eleanor met and married John Lajcin, a man who had lost his hearing when he was 10 after a bout with typhoid fever, although he could speak. Eleanor, who could also speak, was working as a beautician when she met John, had hearing in one ear and a hearing aid in the other and belonged to social clubs for the hearing impaired in Kankakee and Joliet.

"As a kid, I could talk to my parents, although I had to use sign language to talk to my dad," Daniel said. "But I would go to these picnics with my parents and some of the kids could sign so fast I couldn't keep up with them at all."

Eleanor was in her 50s before she fully discovered the joys of painting, after John retired and they moved to Wisconsin. For the next 14 years, she quietly and enthusiastically pursued her art.

Although Eleanor often worked from photographs, the scenery surrounding the lake near the cottage they had built provided much inspiration, too.

"I don't remember her painting when we were growing up, probably because she was busy taking care of us," Daniel said. "But I do remember she had these different types of brushes and little tubes where you could squeeze the paint out and mix them on a little board."

If you would like to see someone featured in "An Extraordinary Life," contact Baran-Unland at 815-467-5249 or artemis279@aol.com.