Ellen Bea ((Fisher)) Epstein

Ellen Bea (Fisher) Epstein passed away on October 12, 2018, shortly after her 71st birthday.  She was born and raised in New York City.  After receiving her BA in history from the University of Wisconsin, she moved to Boston to attend Boston University Law School, an endeavor that lasted only a semester but provided the occasion for her to meet her future husband of nearly 47 years, Irving Epstein, then a graduate student at Harvard.  Forsaking the law and Boston for the moment, Ellen returned to New York to obtain a master’s in teaching at Teacher’s College, Columbia University.  She then taught second grade in the Boston Public Schools for four years during the height of the busing controversy.  In 1975, she decided to go back to school to obtain a master’s in management from the Sloan School at MIT.  After graduation and a year’s sabbatical with her husband in Germany, she became a financial analyst in the Public Charities Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General.  This experience brought back her original love of the law, and she went back to school yet again, this time obtaining her law degree (her third professional degree!) from Northeastern School of Law, while simultaneously raising two small children.  She then practiced for many years as a staff attorney and editor at the Massachusetts State Appeals Court, assisting the justices with their opinions.  She loved her job, but was eventually forced to retire when Alzheimer’s Disease began to take its toll.  In recent years, she continued to enjoy her lifelong passions for family, books, music and Cape Cod.  She is survived by her husband Irv, her sons, David and Peter, and daughter-in-law, Umrao Sethi, all of New York, and her brother, Jonathan Fisher, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

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