SANFORD – Eleanor was born in Biddeford, on Sept. 12, 1932, the daughter of William P. and Edith Clough Thomas. Eleanor graduated from Aroostook Central Institute in Mars Hill and attended the University of Maine in Orono where she earned her B.A. She married Dallas Reed Knight, also a UMaine graduate, and moved to Beverly, Massachusetts, where she and her husband raised four children. Eleanor substitute taught in the Beverly school system and helped establish a preschool at Immanuel Church where she was director for five years. Eleanor and Dallas later moved to Sanford, to help her parents, where she continued to teach by volunteering at the Literacy Volunteers of Greater Sanford.