JOHNSTONE

Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 04:51:53 :

San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday, July 26, 1980
Page 16

ELSIE L. JOHNSTONE

Private funeral services for Elsie L. Johnstone, pioneer women’s rights advocate and conservationist, were held yesterday in San Rafael.

Mrs. Johnstone died Thursday in Greenbrae at the age of 98.

A native of San Francisco, she attended Girls High School and was graduated from the University of California, with the class of 1903, as one of the first women members of Phi Beta Kappa, the national scholastic honor society.

With her husband, Chicago attorney F. Bruce Johnstone, whom she married in 1905, she was active in the establishment of Angel Island and Tomales Bay state parks and the Pt. Reyes National Seashore. She was an early member of the Sierra Club.

While in Chicago she served on the boards of directors of the Glad’s Hill inner city community center, the Juvenile Protection League and the YWCA. She also marched in that city’s 1918 women’s suffrage parade down Michigan Avenue.

She is survived by a son, Alan, of Inverness, and a daughter, Isabel, of Sacramento, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Inurnment was at Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery.

The family prefers memorial contributions to the Marin Conservation League.