Born in Chatham, New Jersey, Ellen was the first of four daughters of Charles A. “Pat” Waters and Margaret Hickman Waters. She excelled in the role of first child: polite, well-organized, and an excellent student. When her father, a Prudential executive, was transferred to the company’s Chicago office, the family moved to Michigan City, Indiana.

Her life changed in 1958 when she arrived as a freshman at the College of Wooster in Ohio and met a handsome sophomore named Bob Pisor. They married shortly after graduation and were together for the next 59 years.

Their first son, David, was born in March 1965. When Bob was sent to cover the Vietnam War for The Detroit News, he persuaded Ellen and two-year-old David to join him in Saigon. She made a home for her young family there until 1968, when the worsening war forced them to Singapore. The following year a newspaper strike brought them home because, as Ellen told it, Bob decided he didn’t want to be killed for a paper that wasn’t publishing. Their second son, Karl, was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, in 1970.

In 1974, Bob became press secretary to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young. Ellen and Bob made a great couple, often out on the town and mingling with Detroit’s celebrities. Ellen was the steady one. She was practical, with a wry sense of humor. She would calmly absorb her driven husband’s rants about whatever issue was urgent that week, then track down the real problem and quietly organize a solution. When friends shared worries about their children, she would offer a dry smile and say, “If they aren’t on drugs or in jail, they’re fine.”

Ellen had a lifelong love of ballet and modern dance. In the 1970s, she became general manager of the Harbinger Dance Company in downtown Detroit. She worked tirelessly to bring Harbinger to the attention of funders such as the Ford Foundation, helping dance and art thrive in Detroit. She preferred being behind the scenes; the stars, she felt, were the dancers.

At 47, Ellen decided she needed a new career. She studied landscape design at Oakland Community College and spent several years working her new craft. When she and Bob bought an 80-acre farm on Eagle Hwy in Lake Leelanau, she founded her own company, Leelanau Gardens. She championed the beauty and resilience of native perennials, and her designs always celebrated Michigan’s natural landscape. Ellen was a talented cook and a natural teacher in the kitchen. Her son Karl learned to cook at her side, and the love of food she gave him instilled a passion that has only grown over the years. He became a gifted cook in his own right. Her pride showed every time she introduced him to friends as her “personal chef.”

Ellen, a generous host who loved filling her home with friends, was a devoted mainstay in community groups of every shape and size: the Walkie-Talkies, Zonta, her Scrabble group, the garden club, the Knit Wits, and her book club.

Above all, Ellen was a wonderful “Grammy” to her six grandchildren. Every summer the Atlanta Pisors, the Tokyo Pisors, and the Chicago Pisors gathered in Leland for weeks of morning hikes, beach days, fresh strawberries, Michigan corn, and long meals on the back porch.

Ellen was preceded in death by her husband, Bob, in 2017. She is survived by her sons, David and Karl; her grandchildren Ysa, Leia, Lulu, Gigi, Charlotte, and Henry; and her sisters, Alice Waters, Laura Waters, and Susan Waters.

No gifts, please. Ellen wants to host one more event to celebrate her life at the Pisor farm in June of 2027. For more information, please reach out to David at [email protected].