Elisabeth Hupp Schillinger

Elisabeth Hupp Schillinger 
3/28/1943—10/27/2022

Elisabeth Hupp Schillinger, beloved daughter, wife, mother and grandmother, and great lover of people, ideas and basset hounds, died on Thursday, October 27th, after a long illness. She was an extraordinarily gifted writer, photographer, artist, cook, professor, and raconteur. Her husband, Jack (also known as John), who preceded her in death, described her last spring as “an exceptional woman,” adding, “I’ve never known anyone who could do so many different things, and all of them so well.” 

Elisabeth—who went by Beth, Lisa, Liz, Babu, and above all, Mama—was born in Springfield, Illinois, on March 28, 1943, to Joyce and Wayne Hupp, who had grown up on nearby farms. They doted on their only child, whom they called “Beth.” From the start, she bewildered them with her intensity and ability, and enchanted her many friends. She excelled at school, piano and violin, and by the age of eight was rallying neighborhood children to hold dog circuses on their quiet street, setting up ramps and frilled rings for the dogs to leap through, and leading the children in musical accompaniment of the canine feats, on drum, trumpet, and (Beth) violin.

When the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, Liz became fascinated by the Soviet Union, and persuaded the Russian janitor at her parents’ church to teach her his language, despite her mother’s misgivings that such an undertaking was “peculiar,” and might harm her popularity. It didn’t. Liz became the editor of her high school newspaper, and in an early reportorial coup, obtained an interview with the young presidential candidate John F. Kennedy when he made a Springfield campaign stop. At the University of Illinois, Liz majored in journalism, and interviewed Adlai Stevenson. In her senior year of college, she met her husband, Jack, who was getting his PhD in Russian Language and Literature. After her graduation, in 1965, they married, and had three children: Liesl in 1966, Justin in 1969, and Nathaniel in 1973. 

As Jack’s career moved the family to a succession of universities—UW in Madison, Saginaw Valley College, Purdue, Oklahoma State, and American University—Liz worked as a journalist, photographer, graphic designer, and professor (she got a PhD in Sociology in 1992), while cooking fabulous family dinners every night, entertaining frequently, coaching the children in music and language lessons, sewing costumes and clothes for festive occasions, and remaking their homes to fulfill her creative vision—through her architectural sketches, sewing and painting (including trompe l’oeil flourishes). “There is no greater joy than redecorating,” she often said.  

At Purdue in the 1970s, Liz ran the Engineering Publications Office for several years, and under her leadership it became the most sought-out graphic design studio in town. At Oklahoma State in the 1980s, she taught journalism, and team-taught a course on the parallel development of the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. in the 20th century with her husband. When Jack’s career moved the family to Washington D.C.in the 1990s, Liz took a job overseas to help cover the costs of moving, mortgages and their sons’ college tuition. For two years in the Yeltsin era, she headed the Moscow office of the Russian-American Press and Information Center (RAPIC) for New York University, flying back at holidays to keep up the family traditions. Returning home in 1994, she taught journalism at Muhlenberg College, then became a consultant for D.C. think tanks. Whatever her work responsibilities, Liz never let down her sense of occasion; to her, nothing was more important than creating memorable experiences for family and friends.

In 1998, while living in an apartment in D.C., Liz and Jack bought a big Victorian house (formerly a Lutheran parsonage) in Strasburg, Virginia, in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, to serve as the “holiday house” for their children and grandchildren. Soon it became their primary home. In Strasburg, Jack and Liz invested themselves fully in the community, volunteering for the Library and the Democratic party, and participating in local literary and gourmet clubs. They had always had dogs; but in Strasburg, they deepened their devotion to the Basset Hound breed, keeping two or three bassets at all times. In 2002, Liz took up oil painting, with basset hounds as her pet subject, and had a hexagonal art studio built onto the house to hold her easels, paints, drafting board, and canvases. Over the next two decades, she painted hundreds of tableaux of bassets (and other animals). In retirement, she and Jack traveled to basset rambles across the country, selling her paintings and prints.

Liz also loved to cook and bake. She pioneered a special lard crust (the dough is melted into batter, poured onto a frozen marble slab, then transferred carefully onto the pie plate, producing a thin and crumbly crust) which got her featured in the New York Times. One of her pies won first prize at the Shenandoah County fair. It was blueberry-strawberry, with a lattice crust made up of dough cut into basset-hound shapes, crisscrossing the pie, nose-to-tail.  

In 2007, Liz was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease; but despite this affliction, she continued hosting elaborate dinners for family and friends, sewing, painting, and writing a regular column for the Bryce Mountain Courier (“Indoor Almanac”), for which she won the Best Regional Column award in 2018. In the last two years of her life, Liz and Jack’s daughter, Liesl, was able to live with her parents, because of the pandemic. They had many feasts and joys throughout this difficult time. A basset puppy, Ducky, arrived late in the game, bringing Liz love and laughter. 

Liz was preceded in death by her parents, Wayne and Joyce Hupp, and by her husband, Jack. She is survived by her daughter and sons, by her daughters-in-law Victoria Schillinger and Phong Liu Schillinger, and by her three grandchildren, August, Guinevere and Dane. 

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to Act Blue, the ASPCA, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, or the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.   

A Celebration of Life will be held for Liz at the family’s home in Strasburg next spring (date to be announced), following the double interment of Liz and Jack’s ashes at Riverview Cemetery, to which friends and family will be invited.    

You may sign the family guestbook and submit condolences online at www.stoverfuneralhome.com.

Stover Funeral Home and Crematory, Strasburg, VA is serving the family of Elisabeth Hupp Schillinger.

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