Eleanor Jean (Baker) Kulik, “Sis”, age 93, passed away on Saturday October 19 at St. Barnabas Nursing Home in Gibsonia PA.
Born in Butler PA in 1926, Eleanor worked as a bookkeeper for Standard Motor while attending Butler High, and continued working there for several years after graduation. In 1950 she married John Kulik, also of Butler, and raised three children. In 1955 the family moved from Butler to Elm Grove West Virginia, where they lived briefly before moving again to Steubenville Ohio the following year. They returned to the Pittsburgh area and bought their first home in Allison Park in 1967.
Her love of children was so great that years later, after her own children were grown, Eleanor took a job at the Glenshaw Presbyterian Church Day Care Center, where she especially enjoyed taking care of the little babies.
Eleanor maintained a lifelong passion for music. As a teen, she would enter (and usually win) jitterbug contests, with her brother Jim as her dance partner. It was this ability that first attracted her future husband John, who says to this day, “Nobody could jitterbug like her. Her feet never touched the ground!”
Along with her talent for dancing, Eleanor also had a beautiful singing voice. Her aspiration, as listed in her high school yearbook, was to sing with an orchestra. While she may not have had the chance to do that, she sang for her own pleasure all her life, and once even cut a record of the song “Don’t Take Your Love from Me” for her husband John while they were dating.
She is survived by John, her loving husband of 69 years; brother David Baker and sister Mary Lou (Baker) Jenkins; sister-in-law Ruth (Brown) Baker; children David, Daniel, and Amy Kulik; their spouses Deena Scaperotta, Kim (Fleischel) Kulik, and Alan Wall; grandchildren Juliana and Marcus Kulik, Sarah (Kulik) Watkins, John “Bub” Kulik, Caitlin (Kulik) McClure, and Eli Wall; and many nieces and nephews.
Friends will be received at the Geibel Funeral Home, 201 East Cunningham Street, Butler, from 2-4 and 6-8 p.m. Thursday. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Friday, at 10:00 a.m., St. Paul Roman Catholic Church, 128 North McKean Street, Butler. Interment will follow in Rose Hill Cemetery.
St. Pauls Catholic Women and Christian Mothers will meet at 9:30 a.m., at the Church Friday, to recite the Rosary.