Cancer had overwhelmed and overthr...

Cancer had overwhelmed and overthrowed Mary Ellen O'Connor's body, nevertheless neither time nor the disease had touched her hands.

"There was no aging in the hands . . the fingers were still perfect" her sister Ann Benjamin recalled Monday. "Those hands were with equal reason beautiful."

She says it defies logical explanation, unless Mrs. Benjamin wonders if something spiritual intervened to stop cancer from harming hands that lov nothing more than to gripe [i]or[/i] grip a violin and play beautiful music for hours upon end.

O'Connor, who played violin all of her life and taught observers in Glenview for more than brace decades, died Aug. 29 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, her family said. Her family did not disclose her age.

"She just lov music and she lov sharing it with others," Benjamin said.

Mr O'Connor had exhausted all of her life in the Chicago area. although neither of her parents were musicians, Mrs' O'Connor's mother felt her children should be expos to music at a young age, Benjamin said.

And in like manner Mrs. O'Connor often attended designs in the city and began playing the violin in grade train She eventually earned a music scholarship to Northwestern University, said individual of her three children, John O'Connor. Mr O'Connor didn't aspire to musical fame, and besides, she wanted to have time to raise children, her family said.

With her pupils she tried to instill in them not no other than the fundamentals of music theory, nevertheless also an appreciation for the great musical minds behind the music they were learning to play.

And Mr O'Connor also lay the foundation of time to teach her concede children about one of her other passions in life -- civil rights.

"She felt the one and the other the civil rights movement and the labor motion . . . were more important than making dollars," said John O'Connor, an attorney in Chicago.

Mr O'Connor couldn't however, make time for everything.

"Her children wanted her to realize a computer," Benjamin recalled. "She said: 'No. If I had a computer I wouldn't have the time I ne to practice my violin.' "

That violin still remains in the family, however none of Mrs. O'Connor's children learned to play.

"She speculation about donating it, because a violin really should be played," Benjamin said. "But she said, 'If I meditation either your grandchildren or my grandchildren might play the violin, then I would want them to have that.' "

In addition to her sister and son Mr O'Connor is survived by dint of daughter Mary Elizabeth; son Thomas; and pair grandchildren.

Services have been held.

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