Elinor Zimmerman Taylor, 89, longtime lawmaker

Elinor Zimmerman Taylor, 89, the longest-serving woman in the Pennsylvania General Assembly when she retired in 2006 after 30 years, died Tuesday, July 27, at a hospice in Stuart, Fla.

The cause of death was complications from a fall July 22 at her home in Stuart, where she had lived since December 2006.

"She was a phenomenal woman who did everything she could do for her constituents," Skip Brion, chairman of the Chester County Republican Party, said Thursday.

"Her legacy in this county and in this state will be how hard she worked for the educational process, what she did for education."

As a legislator, she was a board member for 29 years, and board chairman from 1995 to 2006, of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency.

State Rep. William F. Adolph Jr. (R., Delaware), the current chairman, said that because the agency she chaired "is the state agency that gives out college loans and college grants," Mrs. Taylor's pride was "making higher education affordable and accessible."

In 2003, the agency's headquarters building in Harrisburg was named for her.

Mrs. Taylor was a former dean and coach of women's basketball and field hockey at West Chester University, and was the first woman elected to the West Chester Borough Council, in 1974.

For most of her years in Harrisburg, after her election as a Republican in 1976, she was the only woman among the leadership in either party, rising to caucus secretary by 1994.

But the glass ceiling didn't crack at her approach.

Her successor, Democratic Rep. Barbara McIlvaine Smith, said Mrs. Taylor had a favorite story about her first committee meeting, in 1977.

When she walked into the room, the committee chairman, disdaining to politely use her legislative title or her family name, said, "Elinor, would you pour us some tea?"

Smith said Taylor shot back: "I didn't come here to pour tea. I came here to make legislation."

For a former basketball coach, it was a beautifully blocked shot.

In a 2001 Inquirer interview, Mrs. Taylor explained why she did not get into politics until her daughter was in college.

"It's a hard job," she said, "particularly for young women who want to raise a family."

Mrs. Taylor used a sports analogy for her switch to politics from athletics.

"Rather than be one of the people who groused on the sidelines," she told The Inquirer, "I thought I should get in the mix."

The sexism in Harrisburg didn't bother her. She had seen it close to home.

"I came from a world where I had to fight men coaches for time in the gym," she said.

At the time of that January interview, 28 women were beginning the two-year session in the 203-member House.

It wasn't only men coaches with whom she had struggled.

A 1979 Inquirer article cited "the antagonism" between her and university president Charles G. Mayo that "began in the months following his appointment as president in 1974, in the administration of Gov. Milton Shapp, a Democrat. . . .

"Among the first steps he [Mayo] took was to remove Mrs. Taylor from her position as dean of administration . . . and give her a teaching position in the health and physical education department, where she had previously worked.

"Mrs. Taylor . . . called the experience 'humiliating.' "

At the time, Mrs. Taylor headed the education committee in the legislature, and, Mayo contended, "she intends to have the controlling authority in the appointment of all trustees to this college."

Born in Norristown, Mrs. Taylor graduated from West Chester High School in 1939 and earned a bachelor's in physical education at the then-West Chester State College in 1943 and a master's in education at Temple University in 1958.

West Chester University awarded her an honorary doctorate in public service in 1996.

Her daughter, Barbara Zarrella, said she began her teaching career at West Chester High School in 1946 but interrupted it in 1950 to raise her daughter.

In 1956, she began her 22-year West Chester teaching career in the health and physical education department.

After serving as assistant dean of women in 1968 and acting dean of student affairs in 1969, Mrs. Taylor was named dean of administration there in 1970.

Besides her daughter, Mrs. Taylor is survived by a sister, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by a second sister and her husband of 52 years, William, who died in 2004.

A viewing was set from 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 5, at the DellaVecchia, Reilly, Smith & Boyd Funeral Home, 410 N. Church St., West Chester. A funeral service is to be at 2:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 6, at First Presbyterian Church, 130 W. Miner St., West Chester.