Elaine D. Trehub, 89, of the Applewood Retirement Community in Amherst, died peacefully at home on Sunday, July 1, 2018. She was born in Boston on November 20, 1928 to William (Bill) and Gussie Epstein (née Sherman). She and her three older sisters—Lillian, Charlotte, and Sylvia—were raised in Mattapan, just a few streets away from her future husband, Arnold. She later described the experience of growing up in Boston in the 1930s and 1940s in an oral history interview with the Yiddish Book Center; excerpts can be viewed at https://bit.ly/2tZVnLt. Elaine graduated from Dorchester High School for Girls in 1946, the same year in which she won a city-wide essay contest and received an award from former U.S. Navy officer and would-be U.S. congressman John F. Kennedy, then in his first political campaign. She attended Radcliffe College on a scholarship, graduating in 1950 with a B.A. She met Arnold Trehub at a wedding in 1948—one of his aunts made sure they were seated at the same table—and married him in August 1950. (He later claimed that he had first noticed her on a streetcar before they met, but that claim cannot be verified.) The couple lived in Cambridge while Elaine worked in the Harvard University Archives and Arnold completed his Ph.D. at Boston University. They moved to Amherst in 1954, settling in a house on Farview Way (their home for over sixty years), raising their three children and four cats, and participating in town life. Elaine and Arnold were among the founders of the Jewish Community of Amherst; and Elaine was active in the League of Women Voters for over fifty years.

A proud and accomplished homemaker, Elaine went back to school in 1970 and earned a library degree from Simmons College in 1973, commuting weekly from Amherst to Boston in all kinds of weather during the pre-cellphone era. She was hired as the College Archivist at Mount Holyoke College in 1973 and worked there until 1996. During her 23 years at Mount Holyoke, Elaine built the college archives into a well-organized research collection on women’s education and women’s history in the 19th and 20th centuries. Among other innovations, she introduced subject access to the collection (a revolutionary idea for archives in the 1970s) and a strong service orientation that focused on the needs of students and professional researchers alike. Her belief in service also helped her to build strong relationships with donors; one of her proudest accomplishments in this area was the acquisition of the personal papers of playwright Wendy Wasserstein, a Mount Holyoke alumna. An enthusiastic writer, Elaine took a research sabbatical in England in 1992. Accompanied by her husband and using Cambridge as her base, she collected materials on the history of women’s education in England at archives throughout that country. Her survey article on this topic was eventually published online, at https://bit.ly/2IIMs6t. After leaving Mount Holyoke in 1996, Elaine worked as a consultant in the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections for nine years. She retired from the profession in 2005. During her 32-year career, she was active in the Society of New England Archivists, helped to found the Five College Archivists, and mentored dozens of younger colleagues.

Elaine had a gift for forming lasting friendships and was a polite but unrelenting advocate for those with disabilities and other special needs. She loved reading (fiction and poetry), writing, gardening, swimming, and “shmying around” bargain stores, a habit she acquired at the original Filene’s Basement in Boston in the 1940s. She also loved foreign travel. Starting in the mid-1970s, she and her husband visited Portugal, England, Scotland, the former Yugoslavia, Germany, Austria, Italy, Israel, France, Estonia, Norway, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Despite her many interests and professional accomplishments, however, Elaine’s greatest source of pleasure and pride was her family—her husband and children. They were, as she said at the end, “a family bound by love”.

Elaine was preceded in death by her parents, her siblings, her daughter Lorna, and her husband Arnold. She is survived by her son Craig, of Amherst; her son Aaron, of Opelika, Alabama; her cat Hector, also of Amherst; and nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews in the United States and Spain. A funeral service will be held at the Jewish Community of Amherst on Monday, July 9, at 10:00 AM. A memorial event will be announced at a later date. In lieu of flowers, well-wishers are asked to make contributions to the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; the Mount Holyoke College Library; a library of their choice; or the Dakin Animal Shelter in Leverett, Massachusetts.