The day before 18th Ward Committeewoman Ellen Todd passed away, she was organizing a food giveaway.
“That’s what I want Ellen to be remembered for,” said her father, Alderman Jesse Todd of the 18th Ward. “If we want to know Ellen, we would know Ellen best as a passionate person for equal treatment of all people.”
Ellen Todd passed on Friday, March 27 at 9:30 a.m. from unknown causes, but sickness related. She was 35.
On April 3, her friends and family held a Facebook Live virtual memorial service. It was videotaped at Maple Temple Church of God at 5195 Maple Ave. The five people who spoke and performed at the memorial service waited in their cars until the service organizers, Kimberly-Ann Collins and Pamela McLucas, called them into the church to speak. They sanitized the microphone and changed the microphone cover for each person.
Ellen Todd spent her entire life serving the 18th Ward, Collins said, and she wanted to provide ward residents with a way “to remember their daughter.”
Ellen Todd was born on August 6, 1984 in St. Louis to Jesse and Judith Todd, and she was a loving daughter who cared for her parents, her friends said.
“She was a daddy’s girl,” Jesse Todd said. “She always wanted to spend time with me. She wanted to be with me when I knocked on doors, so she came and passed out the flyers after I became president of the neighborhood association.”
As a teenager, Ellen Todd herself became president of the same neighborhood association that her father led, the 18th ward Regular Democratic Organization. Then at 23 in 2008, she was elected as the Democratic Committeewoman for the 18th Ward.
“She was a beautiful woman with almond-shaped eyes,” said Teri Powers, Democratic Committeewoman of the 24th Ward. “She was feisty, spunky, stubborn, smart and such a fighter.”
Throughout her life, she helped to coordinate Christmas parties in the ward, assist seniors and residents with disabilities to complete their taxes and made sure residents who needed absentee ballots got them, Jesse Todd said.
She graduated from Soldan International Studies High School in 2002 and was heavily involved in Air Force ROTC. She then attended Harris-Stowe State University, where she became an esteemed member of the Alpha Delta Chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority Incorporated.
At the memorial service, Ellen’s friend from Harris-Stowe, Chantell McCline, read a poem.
“If roses were in heaven, Lord please give her a bunch from us,” McCline read. “Place them in her arms and tell her they are from us. Hug her tight because we are thinking of her, which is easy to do everyday with a smile.”
Ellen Todd is survived by her parents Jesse and Judith Ann Todd, and her sister Jennifer Todd.
