Eleanor Ernst Timberg papers

Eleanor Ernst was born in New York City in 1913. She graduated from Horace Mann School, received a B.A. from Smith College in 1934, and a certificate in political science from the London School of Economics in 1935. She worked as research secretary to the editor of Encyclopedia Britannica from 1935-38; for Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1938-40; and conducted weekly radio programs on Jewish holidays for WNYX. In 1940, she moved to the Washington D.C. area, became an economist at the Office of Price Administration and married Sigmund Timberg, a lawyer who worked in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. They went on to have four children.

She began her long career as an activist for children with disabilities when one of her sons was born with brain damage. She volunteered at the Association for Retarded Children in the 1950’s, served as an advisory board member for the Partridge School for Handicapped Children in Gainesville, Virginia, and edited the newsletter for the Forest Haven Asylum in Laurel, Maryland from 1973-1981. She co-founded with Henriette Zegers, Touch Toys, a business that makes surgical dolls for children and toys for people with visual impairment and developmental disabilities, in 1972. She served on the D.C. Developmental Disabilities State Planning Council from 1990 to 2002. She co-wrote "Selected Reading Suggestions for Parents of Mentally Retarded Children," for the Child Development Office of the Health, Education and Welfare Department.

Other activities included serving as the publicity chairman for the Washington League of Women Shoppers in the early 1940’s, and writing for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Statistical Association, and the World Bank from 1942 to 1952.

She knew Alger Hiss and her diaries were subpoenaed by Joseph McCarthy to support his contention that certain social events she attended were actually meetings for Communist-front organizations. Timberg died on May 23, 2002 in Washington, D.C..