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Eugene’s John Elliott III, a former Green Beret who taught, acted, choreographed and coached performers how to fight “so people wouldn’t hurt each other,” died Oct. 6 of heart and kidney failure. He was 88.
Elliott worked with local high schools, summer camps and theaters, teaching swordplay, hand-to-hand combat and other fight choreography. He worked on more than 300 productions, including 31 performances of “Macbeth” and 11 of “Romeo and Juliet.” One of his favorites was the 2002 production of “Z: The Masked Musical” at South Eugene High School. He taught stage construction and stage combat at the University of Oregon, and he worked in the mass communication department at Lane Community College.
He began fencing in junior high and went on to qualify as an expert with 26 different weapons in the U.S. Army Special Forces. He was a free-fall parachutist, an international practical shooter, and taught the bullwhip along with firearms safety. He was a husband and father of four, an artist, a leatherworker and a winemaker.
If Elliott was interested in something, he would learn how to do it, said his daughter Lisa Elliott at the art-filled North Eugene home John Elliott shared with his wife of 66 years, Lee.
Indeed, John Elliott was captivated by many things. A fat binder on the coffee table held news clippings and programs and playbills for every production he’d participated in. As hobbyists and professionally, the couple made woodblock prints together and created and built almost anything as scale miniatures. They traveled to miniature shows throughout the Northwest, winning awards: John Elliott for the intricate work on things like tiny parquet wood floors and Lee Elliott for miniature paintings. Before retirement, the couple owned the Victorian Pearl, a miniatures and dollhouse shop.
John Elliott grew up tough in Alaska, first on a homestead in Homer and later in Anchorage. He got his first broken nose playing hockey on a frozen lake. He was always good with his hands and received his master carpenter certificate at age 14.
Theater caught his interest at Anchorage High School, and he met Boris Karloff in 1957 during a production of “Arsenic and Old Lace. “
While studying speech at the University of Oregon, he met his future wife, Lee, in a theater production with her roommate, bounding over rows of seats to introduce himself to the girl with long blond hair. She was a talented artist and was, as Lisa Elliott said, “gold inside and out.”
In Vietnam during the 1960s, Elliott was exposed to Agent Orange and suffered nerve damage in his legs. He experienced pain — physical and mental — the rest of his life and toughed through it, rarely taking medicine.
The Elliotts settled in Pleasant Hill on land with their own well and septic system, raising their children back-to-the-land style, with do-it-yourself everything. Each summer, the kids would each pick out a style of leather sandal, and Elliott would make them.
The whole family was involved in many of Elliott’s pursuits, including winemaking. His son John Elliott IV says his father let the children choose the wine label name, and they chose “Elliott’s Lots-of-Trouble wine,” because during fermentation the five-gallon storage bottles would often foam up and blow the lock off the top. “I remember blackberry stains on the ceiling in the utility room,” the son said.
The younger John Elliott showed interest in electronics in elementary school, and his dad taught him to solder. “That interest has stayed with me through the years, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that,” he said.
He remembered a woman commissioned a dollhouse-scale model of her home, which the senior John Elliott built from blueprints. It had working lights and she wanted the television to work. “I found a miniature hand-held Casio color TV and pulled it apart and wired it to the house’s electrical system,” John Elliott said. “Dad mounted the screen into the cabinet.”
Picture John Elliott III handsome in cowboy boots with silver tips, a button-up shirt, silver and turquoise jewelry. He had a regular speaking voice and a deeper theater voice. He had memorized the long Robert Service poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” about a gold prospector who dies in the Yukon, and he recited it regularly as a ritual to practice his acting voice.
After Elliott retired from theater work, he and Lee donated his stage weapons to theaters in the area, scattering his swords and other props around the valley.
After all that pageantry, Elliott requested no memorial service. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to The Very Little Theater.
