PITTSFIELD — When a human force of nature such as Ellen Spear suddenly departs, it comes as a shock.

So Spear’s death on Thursday from the cancer she had fought for two years rippled out across the Berkshires — at the museums she led and supported, the organizations she served, and in The Eagle newsroom, where she had worked as the editor of BerkshiresWeek.com since May 2023.

“Let’s remember Ellen bursting with zest, reminding us to live life fully every day,” her longtime friend and former colleague Laurie Norton Moffatt, president and CEO of the Norman Rockwell Museum, said in an email shared with the museum community.

Spear, 69, served as president and CEO at Hancock Shaker Village from 2005-11 and as chief philanthropy officer of the Norman Rockwell Museum from 2019-23. She joined The Eagle in 2023, returning to journalism after 35 years away from reporting and programming roles in radio.

Ellen Spear served as president and chief executive officer at Hancock Shaker Village from 2005-11, and as chief philanthropy officer of the Norman Rockwell Museum from 2019-23.

Spear was active at multiple nonprofit organizations in the community, including the Pittsfield Community TV Advisory Council and Berkshire Community Rowing, a sport she had taken up the past two years.

“She was brilliant, she was hilariously funny, she loved cooking for the people she loved,” said her sister, Amy Steindler of Annapolis, Md.

A journalist by training who got her start in news radio, Spear rose to prominence in her profession, then transitioned into cultural institution management and development.

Her return to journalism at The Eagle allowed Spear to focus on writing — aside from cooking, the pursuit she loved best, according to family members and friends.

The Eagle gave Spear the opportunity to write about food as well, and now it can be told: Spear penned the “Serial Eater” restaurant reviews that have run in this newspaper for the past several years.

“From my perspective, her joining The Eagle felt like she’d come full circle — to return to journalism later in life was something that meant a great deal to Ellen,” Eagle Executive Editor Kevin Moran said. “Ellen was the right person to be the editor of Berkshires Week because she believed in this region's offerings and she generously and eagerly shared the Berkshires experience with others.”

But even Spear’s extensive resume doesn’t begin to describe the person — an energetic, quick-witted woman who reveled in feeding and entertaining guests and found passion in food, the arts and writing.

“Everything Ellen did she made it look easy and effortless,” said her longtime friend Junior Vickers, of Lenox. “It was how she conducted herself. She was so positive about everything and there was really nothing she couldn’t do. I think that’s what I’ll remember about her.”

“She loved cooking for the people she loved,” said Steindler, her younger sister. “She wanted to nourish her people and went to great lengths to do it.”

While Spear changed careers, her love of good food remained a constant. She had three notebooks full of dinner party menus with recipes cross-referenced to her exhaustive collection of Cook's Illustrated magazines. Her party guest lists were similarly curated, with an eye toward bringing interesting people together.

Her son, Benjamin Spear, once asked how she came up with her guest lists. “‘It's all people I want to be friends with.’ That's how she rolled,” he said.

But making it look easy didn’t come easily, Benjamin said. He said his mother was “the pure distillation of human effort,” doing the hard work behind the scenes to assure the illusion of simplicity later.

And those who know of Spear’s success as a party host, and her time in cultural nonprofit management and funding, might be surprised to learn that a woman who became masterful at building relationships had to work at being comfortable in front of others.

“She knew how to work a crowd. And the thing is, like everything else, she made it look easy,” Benjamin said. “But talking with my dad, he pulled me aside and said ‘Ben, she's a massive introvert. All this extrovertedness that you see, she taught herself how to do that.’ It comes easy now, but again, it took many, many years.”

Benjamin says Ellen had remained physically active as a mom, taking up running, hiking and yoga. But it was after he’d completed his high school rowing career at Lenox that she informed him she had taken up the sport as well.

“I don’t know how she found us, but I do know that she came to us two years ago through the learn to row program,” said Berkshire Community Rowing President Connell McGrath. “She was one of those few people who just really took to it.

“She just jumped in with both feet from the beginning,” he said. Not only did she join the group’s master rowing program, she joined its board of trustees.

"We were shocked … she just said yes and immediately started fundraising,” McGrath said.

Ellen’s radio experience also led her to volunteer her time to WTBR-FM as the former student radio station transitioned to Pittsfield Community Television’s management. She served on PCTV’s advisory council, worked behind the scenes on the station’s annual Radiothon fundraiser, served as a guest show host and co-hosted coverage of the Fourth of July and Halloween parades.

“She always had a special place in her heart for public radio and noncommercial radio,” PCTV Executive Director Shawn Serre said. “And we loved having her here.”

Ellen was born Jan. 4, 1956, in Queens, N.Y., to Walter and Edith Steindler. The family moved to Long Island, and then moved to Norfolk, Va., after her parents divorced.

Growing up in Norfolk, Ellen immersed herself in high school theater and made friends with a core group including Kenny Morris, who has performed on Broadway, and the late Stephen Furst, best known for his role as Flounder in “National Lampoon’s Animal House.”

She attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, earning a bachelor's in mass communications.

“She was always the odd one out in her suite, as she was in a suite of southern belles,” Benjamin said of her mother’s college experience. “So she kind of did her own thing there, and found her people, as she always would do.”

Ellen Spear, right, is seen with the late Boston Mayor Thomas Menino in an undated photo. Spear was a program manager at WGBH Radio in Boston at a time when it was the most listened-to public radio station in the nation.

Ellen got her start in radio at WHPN-AM in Hyde Park, N.Y., as a reporter and morning drive-time announcer. She moved on to Connecticut Public Radio, where she was a reporter and program director, and to WGBH in Boston, where as program director, the station earned a Peabody award for general excellence.

Boston and WGBH were also where Ellen met D. Bradford Spear, whom she married in 1989.

A two-year stint at the New Jersey State Council on the Arts followed from 1988-90, starting Ellen’s years in the nonprofit arts world.

“It was like, ‘This is kind of more where I want to be in my life,’" Benjamin said. “She saw it as a natural progression. She never quite had any intention, to my knowledge, of just doing that. But she always wanted, starting at VCU, to be a reporter.”

Ellen was hired at Hancock Shaker Village in 2005, when the family, which had visited the Berkshires during the summer, moved west. She remained at Hancock Shaker Village through 2011, when she moved on to Heritage Museums & Gardens. After seven years on Cape Cod, she returned to the Berkshires as chief philanthropy officer at the Norman Rockwell Museum in 2019.

Current Hancock Shaker Village Executive Director Carrie Holland said Ellen was "very enthusiastic, very direct. She had an institutional wisdom that she shared — you can tell she very much cared about this place and the Berkshires and the people who were involved."

In her letter to Norman Rockwell Museum employees, Moffatt noted that Ellen secured a Barr-Klarman Massachusetts Arts Initiative grant for the museum, coordinated an exhibit of the artist’s iconic Four Freedoms paintings at a museum in Caen, Normandy, and helped the museum weather the COVID pandemic.

“Ellen's brain worked nimbly. She was a facile and beautiful writer. She lived life fully and seized every day,” Moffatt said.

As the Berkshires Week editor, Ellen reported and directed reporting on the arts and culture scene in the Berkshires, and she grew its website as a year-round resource for residents and visitors alike.

“Ellen was an amazing professional — focused, determined, accomplished,” Moran said. “She also was witty, sharp, intuitive, worldly. And we here at The Eagle are remembering her fondly, and we share our condolences with her family and friends.”

Ellen’s last months, spent in recovery from a stroke until the cancer attacked her cognitive abilities, showed her tenacity in the face of difficulty, Amy Steindler said.

“She was so independent — fiercely independent,” she added. “And that’s a double-edged sword right there. People rely on you for strength and that makes it hard to be vulnerable. So I think the last couple weeks in her life were a new experience for her — and she handled it like a champ. She was so happy and optimistic. That’s what carried her through.”

“I’m speechless that she’s really gone,” Vickers said. “The good news is she didn’t suffer — she kept her dignity, she wasn’t in pain.

"But I hate to lose her so quickly. I thought we were going to be 80 years old together walking down Church Street ... I had this whole image in my head. To think she’s gone, it’s hard. It’s hard.”