Obituary: Esther Marie Green Socolofsky, 93, Hood River
Hood River Ore. Jan. 4, 2024 — Esther Marie Green Socolofsky, a long-time resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a more recent resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, died after a brief illness on Friday, December 22, 2023, in Hood River, Oregon. She was 93 years old.
Born December 19, 1930, in Pittsburg, Kansas, to Hallie (Hutcheson) Green and Finis M. Green, she was the younger sister of Ruth. During her formative years in Kansas, she studied piano and voice, sang in choirs, sketched, painted, and developed a love of leading groups of people in activities involving the arts. In her senior year of high school, when her father joined the faculty of Kansas State University, she moved with her family from Pittsburg to Manhattan, KS, where she met her lifelong sweetheart, Marion David (Soc) Socolofsky.
There was a strong attraction between the two from the moment they first saw each other, his dark eyes dancing as he whistled at her in Sunday School (where his older brother Homer was their teacher), teasingly complimenting her and acknowledging that she was dressed more formally in her Pittsburg-style than was the norm in Manhattan. When in the coming weeks she heard his beautiful tenor voice, she was smitten.
An education major with concentrations in Art and English, Esther graduated from Kansas State University in 1953, where she was a member of Mortar Board (leadership honorary), Phi Kappa Phi (academic honorary), Delta Delta Delta sorority, and the K-State advanced choir. She and Soc married on June 28, 1953, at First United Methodist Church in Manhattan and enjoyed 59 years of partnership and love as a married couple. Their connection was so strong that one person commented that they were like the tree and the barbed wire that grew together: it was difficult to tell where one stopped and the other started. After living in Texas and Florida (as Soc completed his Ph.D. at the University of Texas and served in the Air Force), they became deeply involved in their university and church communities in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Soc was an LSU professor and chaired the Microbiology department and Esther worked across the community and state in music, the arts, and education, with particular emphasis on working with young people.
As a teacher and choir director, Esther utilized art and music in interdisciplinary approaches and fulfilled her great passion for helping young people develop by directing the University United Methodist Church Chapel Choir (a youth choir for grades 7-12, singing for the 8:30 a.m. service every Sunday) for over thirty years. She and Soc were mentors to over 1,000 young people who performed in Chapel Choir elaborate productions that toured across the United States, with the final tour to the Grand Canyon State of Arizona presaging where she would live after Soc’s death. Esther utilized her visual and musical art in all aspects of the productions, including scene and costume design as well as musical direction. She engaged choir parents to utilize their talents in every aspect of production, from lighting, and sound, to set design and costume production. She found a special role for every member of the choir in each production, playing to their unique talents and abilities.
One of the highlights of Esther’s career was producing a gathering of more than 10,000 United Methodists in Baton Rouge, drawing from her theatrical background and capacity to engage volunteers to creatively use the space for preaching-in-the-round by some of the most noted United Methodist preachers of the time, with a large-scale fountain built by volunteers serving as the centerpiece of the stage, a mass choir singing, and all groups among the 10,000 people processing in with colorful banners they had made.
Esther supported Soc’s career and activities, with active engagement and leadership in the LSU Campus Club, hosting epic parties for the LSU Microbiology department faculty and graduate students, attending American Society for Microbiology meetings across the country with Soc across five decades, and participating in the Dean’s Circle of the LSU College of Science. Together, they shared a love not only of music but of sports, having season tickets to LSU football and basketball games for years and attending men's and women's basketball games up until the time of Soc’s death.
After Soc’s death, Esther moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, to be near family, where she resided for almost 11 years at McDowell Village, a wonderful community of seniors and tremendous staff where she thrived. She spent her final months in 2023 enjoying family in the Pacific Northwest in Hood River, Oregon, where she was able to see more than 20 family members and friends who came to visit, enjoyed excursions, wine tastings, picnics, and the beauty of the mountains, and quickly forged strong relationships with new friends there.
In the wake of her death, her family has received beautiful messages from friends, family, and choir members about her impact on their lives. The word ‘light’ is repeated through so many of the messages as a descriptor of what she gave the world. Many have referred to her as ‘their other mother.’ For Esther, love was not a limited commodity; love was limitless. When reflecting on her years with her youth choir, she told her daughter, ‘I loved every one of them.’ They felt that, and she was so proud until her death of the way that the alumni of her choir went on to make such positive contributions to the world.
Esther was a savant with people, a magician who could see the best in people and help them bring their best to the world. She was a creative force who loved life, loved the beauty of the natural world, stayed abreast of current events, continued to cheer for her LSU Tigers (the only time anyone ever heard her raise her voice), reveled in picnics in the beauty of nature and had just enough mischief to make her fun. She died in view of majestic Mt. Adams, of which upon seeing for the first time from her window she said, ‘I lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.’ In the hours before her death, a robin (Soc’s favorite bird) sang beautifully at her window, the clouds lifted and the sun came out, illuminating an enormous rainbow visible from her room, and hundreds of geese flew overhead, honking and calling. She passed gently, surrounded by beauty.
Esther is survived by her daughters and their husbands, Kathleen Socolofsky and Bob Gregoire (Davis, CA) and Mary Sue and Paul Ingraham (Hood River Oregon), grandson John Ingraham and his wife Miriam Huntley (Cambridge, MA), grandson David Ingraham and his partner Jackie Sreenan (White Salmon, WA) and great-grandson Lev Abraham Huntley Ingraham, whose birth she lived to celebrate and whose first weeks of life she witnessed, thanks to FaceTime. She is survived by beloved nieces and nephews and grandnieces and nephews across the United States.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Hallie and Finis Green, her sister and brother-in-law, Ruth (Green) and Alden Stockinger, and sisters- and brothers-in-law Homer and Helen Socolofsky, Mildred (Socolofsky) and John Lindholm, and Dorothy (Socolofsky) Graham. She is preceded in death, also, by her nephews Jimmie Graham and Tom Socolofsky. Dorothy’s husband, Jim Graham, the last of the Socolofskys’ ‘outlaw’ inlaws, died within 24 hours following Esther’s death.
Memorial arrangements are pending. Contributions may be made to the Esther Socolofsky Memorial Fund at University United Methodist Church, 3350 Dalrymple, Baton Rouge, LA 70802, or a charity of your choice. A special thank you is given from the family to Parkhurst Place and Providence Hospice in Hood River, Oregon, for your loving care and support.
Arrangements are under the direction of Anderson's Tribute Center • 1401 Belmont Avenue, Hood River, Oregon 97031. Visit www.AndersonsTributeCenter.com to leave a note of condolence for the family.
