Ellen Burbank

Ellen Randolph Coolidge Burbank died at home in Philadelphia on May 15, 2023. The daughter of Francis Lowell Coolidge and Helen Reed Curtis, and a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, she was born in Waltham, Massachusetts on August 4, 1945.

Ellen spent her early childhood in Concord, Massachusetts, but once her father joined the CIA, she lived with her parents and siblings in Washington, D.C., Bern, Switzerland, and Carthage, Tunisia. She attended a dizzying number of schools and was exposed to numerous languages and cultures. As a result, she acquired an abiding passion for travel, as well as a strong work ethic, which enabled her to overcome dyslexia before she was diagnosed with it.

A graduate of Rosemary Hall and of Finch College, Ellen worked briefly in New York before moving to the Boston area. She held a variety of positions at MIT before and after 1970, when she married Stephen Burbank, whom she met when he was a Harvard College roommate of her twin brother, Frank. They spent their first year of marriage – an extended honeymoon – in Europe and North Africa on a traveling fellowship. Upon their return, they served as house parents in a Harvard freshman dormitory while her husband finished law school.

Following one-year stints in Boston and at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., Ellen moved with her husband to Philadelphia in 1975, where he began a forty-seven-year career at the University of Pennsylvania. Ellen played various roles in non-profits, including as Director of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, and in corporate philanthropy, before joining the Pew Charitable Trusts as a program officer in education. In 1981, Ellen gave birth, very prematurely, to Peter, and she met the demands of her career and the care of her disabled son with determination and grace.

Ellen retired from Pew in the early 2000’s in order to spend more time ensuring Peter’s future happiness and enjoying her beloved home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. But she came out of retirement to direct the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, finally retiring for good in 2011. She was not idle, however, serving as a Trustee of New England Village, an independent living community where Peter has been since 2006, and of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, among other charitable activities.

Ellen never lost her love of travel, and she particularly enjoyed Paris and London. She made friends wherever she was, and, because of her extraordinary discretion, she was a trusted confidante. She also never lost her determination and grace, which enabled her successfully to manage autoimmune disease for more than thirty years and, until recently, heart disease as well. She approached a 2019 diagnosis of dementia with characteristic grit, prompting her doctor to extol her “spectacular resiliency.” Practically to the end, she greeted Peter’s daily telephone calls with a cheerful “What’s up, Tootsie Roll?”

The respect and love Ellen’s friends have for her was never more evident than in their extraordinary efforts on her behalf and that of her husband, who served as her primary caregiver from 2019, as the weight of myriad health challenges finally wore down even her formidable defenses.

Ellen was predeceased by her parents, her twin brother, Frank, and her sister, Nina. In addition to her husband of fifty-three years and son, she leaves her sister, Mary, three nieces, three nephews, six great-nephews and nieces, and a host of loving friends in Philadelphia and on Cape Cod who miss her.

In lieu of flowers, friends are encouraged to send a donation to New England Village, 664 School Street, Pembroke, MA 02359.