A Lasting Encounter With EZ

This column originally appeared on Aug. 1, 2010

The memory of Elinor Z. Taylor that has stuck with me for all the years I knew her, wrote stories about her, answered angry telephone calls from her, and tried to explain her to others is the night she followed me into the men's room of West Chester Borough Hall.

It was Aug. 30, 1985, a sweltering hot evening made even stickier by the crowd of residents inside the Borough Council chambers on the ground floor of the old Borough Hall, a building that has gone to dust. The chambers was packed with angry neighbors of the Sartomer Co., a chemical processing company on the eastern edge of the borough that had long contributed to a foul stench that greeted motorists as they came into town on West Chester Pike.

Earlier that week, a chemical leak at the plant had forced the evacuation of several blocks surrounding the plant. No one was seriously hurt, as I recall, but the company was taken to task vociferously by neighbors because they had not been warned about the emergency. The neighbors had gathered in front of the borough council a few nights later to demand that the plant be shut down, and that proper emergency procedures be put in place. One of the neighbors told the council, "I would rather run than find out later, 'You're going to die.'" It was that kind of night.

The council meeting was on a Wednesday. Attending the session, in addition to the neighbors, were a crop of politicians and political players, including, not surprisingly, Taylor, who had served as a West Chester councilwoman herself, lived in the borough, and took a keen interest in how she could possibly help those affected by the leak. I don't remember if she said anything in particular that night, but I noted her attendance. I'd been covering the borough for a little more than a year, and had interviewed her a few times. We'd met.

A regular feature that ran Fridays in the Daily Local News at the time was a compilation of little noticed Chester County goings-on, inside jokes, and gentle pokes at area personalities. Reporters could contribute items anonymously to "Ham 'n Wry," to tease their favorite, or least favorite, news personalities. That Friday, I wrote something about how some politicians would use any crisis or tragedy to promote themselves, get their names out, and I named Taylor as one such miscreant.

So picture this: at a follow up session that day, the crowd has reassembled, the company executives are promising to suspend things, Taylor is there to read a statement from the state about an investigation into the leak, and the newspaper has been on the streets for six hours, give or take, the jibe at Taylor still inky fresh. The council takes a minute to break for informal discussions with the company folks, and I walk down the hall to the men's room to, well, wash my hands, shall we say.

As I walked in the door, suddenly who stood behind me but the Honorable State Representative Elinor Zimmerman Taylor, hair white, glasses on, eyes furious. "How dare you write such tripe about my motives?" she demanded. "Who did I think I was? What did the Daily Local mean trying to slam her?" I think she may have offered to readjust the nose on my face at no additional charge, but I may be wrong.

"Elinor," I said, interrupting her. "You're in the men's room."

She blinked. "So I am," she said. Then, without warning, she smiled, winked at me, slapped me on the chest, and walked out the door, telling me she'd talk to me later.

The people that I spoke with the day after Taylor died told me invariably that they'd had similar encounters with her, when she would confront them angrily and start heating up, only to settle down after a bit and leave them agreeably. When I remarked to one man that Taylor was certainly not a shrinking violet, he laughed a shuddering kind of laugh, remembering perhaps picking up the phone and hearing Taylor's voice bark out his name.

The last time I saw her was after she had announced her decision to leave the House of Representatives and was readying for her retirement. She was in the Chester County Book and Music Co., buying up a stack of books to give as holiday presents for friends. I said hello, and wondered how she was. She looked up at me from her purse, remembered who I was, and smiled.