Pacific Grove, CA

Ellen Anne Clarkson, née Polhemus, died peacefully around midnight on November 30, 2025, after suffering a major stroke the same day. She passed at the Monterey Peninsula Community Hospital in California. She was 88 years old. She had lived in Pacific Grove, CA at Canterbury Woods since 2003 and previously had lived in Salinas, Ca since 1964.

Ellie was born in Phillipsburg, NJ, on March 19, 1937.

She was born into a centuries-long line of Pennsylvania Dutch dairy farmers. The Polhemus “Crossroads” Farm in Belvidere, NJ, was converted from a dairy into a prosperous vegetable and flower farm stand by her brother John, which drew loyal customers from a wide swath of country between Philadelphia and NYC. Despite learning to drive tractors at age 12 and showing interest in farm life, she decided to attend college at Clark University in 1956. She earned her degree in European History and drove her teal 1959 convertible Austin-Healey ‘Sprite’ to work in Los Angeles as a social worker. Her soon-to-be husband, Harry, had enlisted in the military and was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey in 1960, where he became fluent in Mandarin. Shortly thereafter, they were sent to Taiwan, where Harry worked in low-level espionage against communist China. Ellie also studied Mandarin in Taiwan. In 1964, three years after returning from Asia, they married and settled in Salinas.

They divorced in 1978. She was a social worker her whole life, first supporting women whose husbands were incarcerated at Soledad Prison, and then for the mental health department of Monterey County for 26 years, mainly working with solitary or under-housed people with severe addiction and/or mental illness. In addition to her worklife, she volunteered in the 1970’s to help found and run the Women’s Crisis HotLine of Salinas and the Monterey County Shelter for Abused Women. She also worked on countless Democratic political campaigns, at the local, state, and national level.

Ellie’s passions and interests were many: she was an avid reader, a daily swimmer, and a lover of(in no particular order): friends, parties, poetry, laughter, good food, crossword puzzles, Scrabble, the Giants and 49ers, contemplative retreats, sweets, vigorous written correspondence, social justice, classical music, and the historical Jesus. Later in life, she became a tenacious and gifted competitor in Contract Bridge. In 2006, with bridge partner Jean Engvall, she set the highest game record (83.5% among 12 tables) yet recorded on the Monterey Peninsula. In retirement, she served as an ombudsman assessing several different retirement communities.

She was also the resident representative on the board of the Episcoal Homes Foundation, which oversaw the function of 6 large Senior Care facilities in Northern California. She was thrilled to retire at the young age of 66 to Canterbury Woods, where she made hundreds of incredibly kind, smart, and interesting friends. Her friends and family will remember her as gregarious, articulate, caring, and ‘one tough cookie.’ She is survived by her youngest child, David, his wife, Quin, and her 2 beloved grandsons, Milo Augustus and Sebastian Hawkins Clarkson. For 14 consecutive years, she would trek 800 miles north in her teal Toyota to make carrot cake with cream cheese frosting for her grandson’s birthdays. She never missed a single one, until the drive became too medically perilous.

She was predeceased by her first-born daughter, Susan, in 1965, her first (and severely disabled) son, Christopher, in 1992, and her ex-husband, Harry, in 1990. Ellie absorbed many challenges in her early adulthood, but with faith, grit, time, and love, she healed and spread a lot of joy in her community. Ellie Clarkson died as she lived–independent and on her own terms. We hope that her strength and laughter will live on in the hearts of those she touched.

A celebration of life will happen on Saturday, January 17th, 2026, at 2 pm at Canterbury Woods, on 651 Sinex Avenue, in Pacific Grove, Ca. In lieu of flowers, please make any donations to the women’s homeless shelter, “Casa de Noche Buena” in Seaside, Ca.

“Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth? How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of the world that are kind, and maybe also troubled-roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply?”

-Mary Oliver