Elizabeth P. Rankin ’77

    Elizabeth was born in Boston Aug. 22, 1955. Her parents loved traveling, and summers were spent on long car and camping trips. This love of travel never left her. 

In 1973, Elizabeth entered Princeton. There was still some resistance to the admission of women, including one professor who insisted on calling her Mr. Rankin. She studied history, writing her thesis on the impact of the Meiji restoration on Tokyo in the 19th century. After graduation, she spent three years in Japan teaching English, then spent 16 months traveling on her own through Asia and Europe. 

When she returned, Elizabeth began working at Oxfam America. One of her colleagues, Marc Belanger, became a dear friend, then her husband in 1987. They visited Guatemala in 1988 and 1990 while Marc was researching his dissertation. In 1992, they adopted their son Rafael from Guatemala. In 1995, they moved to South Bend, Ind., where Marc worked for 28 years at St. Mary’s College. Around 2000, Elizabeth began to work at Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Her skill at working with non-native English writers made her especially valued. In 2007 she became a writer-editor at Kellogg, where she remained until she retired at the end of 2017.

Elizabeth learned she had chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2009. Over the next 10 years she was on eight different medications; each worked for a time but was unable to produce sustained remissions. Until the summer of 2022, she was able to work, travel, and live a very full life. She died Dec. 23, 2022.

Her Buddhist sensibility would tell us to remember her and grieve, but go on living and trying however we can, to be our very best selves and make the world better in whatever way we can. She did that every day — imperfectly she would insist — but in a way that inspired those around her.