Eleanor Echols Liu

Eleanor Echols Liu died October 15, 2026 in Topeka, KS at the age of 107, the last of her generation. She was born on June 14, 1919, the second of six siblings to William Allen and Bertha Echols in Birmingham, AL. As a girl she joined the Girl Scouts and later became a Girl Scout Leader. She worked as a small craft instructor and swimming teacher at a summer camp in Maine, where she went by the title, “Skipper.” She started a synchronized swimming team at the local YWCA.

After graduating from high school, she worked as a secretary for ten years to save up money to go to college. She enrolled at David Lipscomb College and worked full-time while attending. She graduated with her BA Magna Cum Laude in 1951. While at Lipscomb she met and married John Sheng Kuang Liu. They were married for 68 years, until his death in 2018.

She is survived by her two children, Diana Liu Carriger and John Dennis Liu, six grandchildren and ten great grandchildren.

Eleanor was a 6th grade teacher in Indiana for 25 years, mostly in Bloomington where the family moved in 1959. She earned her Masters degree from Indiana University. During the summers, she taught swimming lessons.

Eleanor loved to travel. She was an adult chaperone for a group of 11 year olds for a CISV (Children’s International Summer Villages) in Sweden in 1960, and later was the assistant director for a CISV camp in Bloomington, IN. The family circumnavigated the globe in 1966-1967, traveling by car and ship. She and her two teenagers sailed from Taiwan to Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Senegal, and through the Strait of Gibraltar, to Marseilles, France where the met up with John who had flown to Germany to pick up a car, which they drove around Europe, before boarding another ship to the States. After it was possible to travel back and forth from Mainland China, John and Eleanor started dividing their years between the two countries. She taught English to college students at the Changsha Railway Institute in John’s home province, Hunan. They moved to Beijing where she taught Army Officers at the National Defense University. While in China she learned and practiced Tai Chi. Back in Kansas she enjoyed aqua ex, water volleyball and led Tai Chi classes at Great Life.

She was a beloved member of Central church of Christ in Topeka and loved Ladies’ Bible Class. In China, she was attended ChongMenWen church and helped the group who does simultaneous translation into English for their worship services.

In Beijing, she was on the Board of the Beijing International Society. She started a group called Tuesday Trotters who toured cultural, educational, or historic sites in Beijing, then went out to lunch together, after which they often played dominoes. From the Tuesday Trotters came her first book, Off the Beaten Path in Beijing, which featured pictures and descriptions of the obscure places she had ferreted out. It was sold at hotel gift shops to tourists. She later authored her memoir, The Red Thread and three children’s books, Lao Li and his Bean Curd, Ai Li – A Farm Girl in China, and Ai Li goes to School, depicting rural life in China.

Eleanor lived a long and fulfilling life and will be greatly missed.

A memorial service will take place in the near future, please check back here for a date and time. 

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