Sharon Y. Elliott

Sharon Y. Elliott died unexpectedly on February 4, 2025 at the Kirkhaven Nursing Home in Rochester.

Sharon was born in Rochester, New York in 1948. She graduated from Monroe High School in 1966. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Ottawa University in Kansas in 1972. On summer break from college she took a job on an assembly line at Eastman Kodak Company, following the footsteps of her father. This job turned into a career that took her from the assembly line, to product control, and eventually advancing to quality control. She retired in 2000 from Eastman Kodak as a key member of the digital camera product development team. 

She found joy in her family. Long before ancestry.com and 23 and Me, Sharon made her biggest family legacy as an avid amateur genealogist. She traveled across Pennsylvania and New York to take photographs of dozens of family gravestones and conduct original research. She also corresponded with historical societies and clerk’s offices and other historical repositories to gather family information. As a result, as the unofficial family historian, she created an in-depth family historical record.

She was a photographer and an early adopter of technology and innovation. Photographs of nature were a particularly favorite subject, and she also photographed Robert F. Kennedy as a teenager. She would pick a spot on the map and plan day trips that she could do in one day. She loved lighthouses and doted on her grand-nephew Gavin. She was a good cook with pot roast, mashed potatoes and date nut bread being some of her best dishes. Her annual Christmas letters and her reading choices were full of philosophy. Rooted in her upbringing in the South Avenue Baptist Church and growing up at the foot of the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, she attended civil rights marches and remained committed to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and access for all Americans to their inalienable rights of dignity. 

Although she had grown more secluded in her later years, moving into elder care opened up her world again. She renewed old relationships. And her kindness, her good listening skills and her propensity for sharing Tootsie Rolls made her many friends among the staff.

She was predeceased by her father Hugh S. Elliott, mother Dorothy (Bush) Elliott, and sister Laura Elliott-Engel. She is survived by sisters Carolyn Peevey and Ruth Wells; niece Amaris Elliott-Engel (Jason Rearick), great-nephew Gavin Engel Rearick, nephew Jeremy Elliott-Engel, niece Cindy Ingerick, niece Sandra Weasley and other beloved family and friends. 

Sharon’s ashes will be interred at White Haven Memorial Park during a private family ceremony.

Last year, Sharon selected St. Joe’s House of Hospitality, a Catholic Worker community, and Willow Domestic Violence Center to receive a large portion of her life savings due to their respective work for people who are homeless and people facing abuse. She also was a lifelong liberal committed to civil rights and social justice for all. Contributions in lieu of flowers may be made in Sharon’s memory to St. Joe’s House of Hospitality, P.O. Box 31049, Rochester, NY 14603; Willow Domestic Violence Center, 693 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607; or the New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation, 55 Broadway, Floor 15, New York, NY 10006.