home

A Touch For Sailing and Healing
June 14, 2009

In 1982, Don and Ginny Eliot packed up their car, left their native Kansas and drove east toward the coast and places with more opportunities for sailing. In North Carolina, they took the ferry across the Neuse and then the road leading to Oriental. As they came over the bridge and Oriental came in to view, Don said they’d found the place to live.

Which they did for the next 27 years.

Don Eliot in the early 1990’s

Don Eliot died Wednesday morning and his friends and family are remembering him for the teaching and healing he did in those years.

Don had learned to sail in his Kansas. In the early 80’s he was working as a grocery store manager in Salina when that search for more sailing brought him east. When he settled in Oriental, his work dovetailed with the boats.

After landing in Oriental, Don worked at Oriental Marina (where friends and family are gathering after the funeral service Sunday.) He went on to become a sailing instructor and to run Oriental’s Sailing School. Later, he was a go-to person for computer problems, says his sister-in-law Gail Good. Most recently, he became known locally for alleviating physical pain, through energy work and a touch therapy known as EFT.

One friend, Katy Pugh, says that he could do “incredible work in getting rid of back pain.”

Gail Good says Don was happiest when he was on a boat and — when that wasn’t possible — when he was playing golf.

One other aspect of Don that few people know, she says, is his art, and sketches and drawings of people and boats and buildings.

Don was beset by lung cancer and had been receiving Hospice care. He died at his home early Wednesday morning. He and his wife Ginny had been married 39 years.

Katy Pugh says Don was “seeing people up to the end. He was talking to people all day Tuesday, “ she said, “which was the way he’d want it.”

She recalls her last conversation with him a few days before he died, as she was leaving town on a trip. “The last thing I remember him telling me was, ‘You just go and have some fun.’, Katy says. “That’s a good memory of Don.”

- – -

A service for Don Eliot is scheduled for Sunday, June 14 at 2pm Bryant Funeral Home. Afterward, Ginny and Don’s family are receiving friends at the Oriental Marina.

Posted Sunday June 14, 2009 by Melinda Penkava