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BY JANIE GOULD
At an age when many people have slowed
down, 81-year-old former teacher Elaine
Hameister of Vero Beach writes and publishes
children’s books when she’s not hosting fundraising
events at her home for charities such as Military
Moms, attending high school football games and concerts
or organizing the recent “Brit Bash” dinner at her
Anglican church, Christ Church.
Hameister has a schedule that could exhaust someone
half her age, though she suffers from a debilitating illness
known as post-polio syndrome that has made her
nearly unable to walk. She’s always upbeat, has many
friends in Florida and her native Michigan and is never
at a loss for words. She can converse with anyone, from
preschoolers to fellow octogenarians, and draw out
reticent teens, on just about any topic.
Born in Mount Clemens, Mich., Hameister went to
college at Eastern Michigan University. In 1951, when
she was a junior, she contracted polio. That was three
years before the Salk vaccine was introduced. She was
hospitalized for several months and underwent a year
of physical therapy.
Hameister didn’t get her college degree at that time,
but she was able to teach third grade and supervise
student teachers. When she was nearly 40, she went
back to school and got her degree. Her two daughters
attended her graduation.
Hameister’s husband, Bob, worked as a General Motors
executive, and the family moved around a lot in
Michigan and Ohio. Much later, those experiences led
Hameister to write and publish a children’s book called
“What is Moving?”
“While our children were in school we bought 11 different
houses,” she said. “Our kids cried all the way to
Cincinnati. We lived there for one year and they cried
all the way home (to Michigan).”
The Hameisters now divide their time between Petoskey,
in northern Michigan, and Vero Beach. She started
writing books seven years ago, after taking a class from
author Leslie McGuirk at the Vero Beach Museum of Art.
“She was the most encouraging person I ever met,”
she says.
In Vero Beach, Hameister served for several years as a
volunteer mentor for students in need of extra reading
instruction at Dodgertown Elementary School. That
experience inspired her to write an alphabet book about
food, starting with “a” for avocados, artichokes and
asparagus. She illustrated it with her own watercolor
drawings.
ED DRONDOSKI