Elaine Cogan passes at 92

PHOTO: From left, Elaine Cogan, z"l, and her husband, Arnold Cogan, z"l, display their family haggadah in this undated photograph. Elaine wrote - and re-wrote -  the volume, as well as helping craft a prayer book for Congregation Neveh Shalom and her three books on public communications. (Courtesy Sue van Brocklin)

By ROCKNE ROLL
The Jewish Review
Elaine Cogan, z”l, a lifelong leader in the Jewish and broader Portland communities, passed away Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024 at the age of 92.
Among other accomplishments, Cogan was the first woman elected president of Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland in 1978. She was the third member of her immediate family to serve as president of the Conservative synagogue, following her husband, Arnold Cogan, z”l, and her brother-in-law, Gerald Cogan, z”l. 
“Her philosophy was, ‘If I’m going to be part of it, I might as well be chair’ or ‘I might as well be president,’” her daughter, Sue van Brocklin, said. 
It was a trend Elaine Cogan established early on as editor of the student newspaper at Lincoln High School and as President of B’nai B’rith Girls in Portland. It was during this time that she met Arnold, who became her husband of 70 years, at a B’nai B’rith dance when the pair of them had recently arrived in the area – Arnold from Maine, Elaine from Brooklyn. The pair married when they were juniors at Oregon State University. They returned to Portland where they both set to work to serve their community. Arnold is well known as an architect of Oregon’s Senate Bill 100, the foundation of the state’s land use planning system which is still seen as a model of land use planning nationwide and was the state’s first land use planning director. Elaine was there every step of the way, her expertise in communications paving the way for the state’s groundbreaking policies. 
“They did everything together,” van Brocklin said of her parents. “That was what kept them going.”
Elaine Cogan was a stay-at-home mom to her three children, but that was far from all she was doing. She wrote a public affairs column for the Oregon Journal, which continued after the paper’s absorption by The Oregonian. She became involved in the League of Women Voters – becoming its President – and later sat on the Portland Development Commission and the board of directors of Providence Medical Center, eventually chairing both. Later, when she resided at Miramont Pointe Assisted Living, she chaired the residents’ council – naturally. 
Her work connected her with Gov. Tom McCall’s efforts to stave off political violence in 1970 through the Vortex music festival, and President Lyndon Johnson’s Model Cities program; work that put her on the leading edge of civil rights work in the city and lead to the development of the Portland’s neighborhood associations – work which Cogan called “one of the most pivotal experiences of my life.”
“Portland was practically an all-white city,” Cogan told Anne LeVant Prahl in an oral history interview for the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education in 2015. “I became part of the steering committee. The chair was a wonderful black businessman who became a very good friend of mine. He told me when he met me, ‘Elaine, I know I can trust you. When I grew up in Cincinnati, I was a young, poor boy. I got a job at for a furniture store run by a Jewish family. They were so good to me; they helped me buy clothes for school. They fed me…’ He said, ‘You’re Jewish. That’s all I need to know.’”
That Judaism was an enormous part of her family’s life. Van Brocklin recalled that Friday night dinners in the Cogan home near Mount Tabor were mandatory, and that she was one of the first girls to have a bit mitzvah at Neveh Shalom. Cogan also wrote (and re-wrote) her family’s Passover haggadah, amended Dore Schary’s “Hanukkah Home Service” for her family’s use, and even led Neveh Shalom’s effort to rewrite their prayer book to remove gendered references to G-d – a passion project of hers.
“With people today using pronouns, giving their pronouns, and doing other things to be aware of language and the way we speak about ourselves and others,” van Brocklin said, “I thought her interest in doing that regarding references to G-d was definitely ahead of the curve here in Oregon.”
“I was critical for some time over the reference to G-d as a ‘he,’ as a ‘him.’ So, I’m talking to [Rabbi Joshua Stampfer, z”l] one day, and said I had looked at other prayer books and there was nothing that was satisfactory,” Cogan told OJMCHE in her oral history. “Rabbi Stampfer said, ‘Well then let’s write our own.’”
Of course, Cogan was chair of the committee that produced “Oneg Shabbat,” (The Joy of the Sabbath) but her most widely known written works are almost certainly “You Can Talk to (Almost) Anyone about (Almost) Anything: a Speaking Guide for Business and Professional People,” which she co-authored with Portland State University’s Ben Pardow, “Successful Public Meetings,” which is in its second edition and “Now That You’re on Board: How to Survive and Thrive as a Planning Commissioner.” She also served as interim editor of The Jewish Review and, in what her daughter called her proudest literary achievement, self-published the collected childhood stories of her husband in “The Boyhood Adventures of Jimmy & Arnold.”
In 1975, Cogan and her husband founded their own firm, Cogan and Associates (eventually Cogan Owens Greene), bringing his planning expertise and her communications talents under one roof. While they each had their individual clients, they also collaborated on a variety of projects. Van Brocklin explained they went to the office together, ate lunch together and came home to make dinner together. 
Cogan remained engaged in public affairs. For seven years, she hosted a program on KGW-AM radio, interviewing elected officials and other leaders, and continued to offer political commentary for local TV stations long after. She was much more than a local light – her reputation in the fields of public speaking and strategic communications was national. She continued her column in The Oregonian for 15 years and regularly wrote for the national trade publication Planning Commissioners’ Journal for almost two decades.
“Elaine leaves an indelible legacy of accomplishment that transformed both the Jewish community in Portland and our entire city into better places for everybody with her many civic contributions and skills as an author and journalist,” Sen. Ron Wyden said. “But my lasting memories of Elaine are just as much of her grace, good humor and kindness that made her like a second mom to me. She was always there for me and countless others to offer both a nosh and her good counsel.”
“Initially through her incredible assistance with the Clackamas County Complete Communities project, and ongoing through much of my career, Elaine became a friend and a mentor,” Portland City Administrator Michael Jordan said. “Elaine was quite small in physical stature, but a giant in the world of public engagement. I learned so much from her.”
Cogan and her husband were motivated to work so hard to leave so much impact in so many areas by a most fundamental Jewish value, her daughter explained, recalling a reception the couple hosted at their home, one of a regular series of gatherings for their various professional and personal circles that, naturally, attracted quite the guest list.
“They spoke of tikkun olam, of repairing the world,” van Brocklin recalled. “I think above all, that was their philosophy; we are going to give back more than more than we’ve been given so that we can leave this place a little better.”
There was also time for family – the Cogans went as a bunch to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland each year prior to the COVID pandemic. When they eventually had grandchildren, they celebrated them, too. As van Brocklin’s middle daughter’s birthday almost always landed around the weekend of the Portland Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade, Cogan and her husband made a party of it, staking out a spot at the crest of the Burnside Bridge, the very center of Portland, and even paying the neighborhood kids to go mark off space at 3 am before the parade to secure a large enough area for 50 or so guests. The birthday cake was homemade, like almost every other baked good in the family, as Cogan was a prolific baker. 
Beyond her devotion to her work, her community, her husband and her family, Cogan was also passionate about tea. In 1983, Cogan was in New York on a work trip and tried to get a cup of tea at a restaurant. She was disappointed with the results, particularly compared to what she had become accustomed to back home. Ever the writer, she expressed her disappointment in a letter to the editor of The New York Times. In November, the paper published her letter – a week later, the paper’s editorial board weighed on the subject – firmly in agreement with Cogan. 
“Mrs. Cogan has a point,” the Times said. “Her prior, implied point concerns Coffee Bigots. They are people who think it is somehow un-American or unmanly or troublemaking to drink tea - and scorn those who do as Tea Snobs.”
Looking to fix the problem, Cogan set about crafting and marketing her own tea by mail order under the banner “Elaine’s Tea Company.” The venture lasted three years, but one of her blends of Keemun, Darjeeling, Ceylon, and Assam black teas is still available from Connecticut’s Harney & Sons as “Elaine’s Blend.”
“We had orders, but we just couldn’t sustain it. I had to make a decision, did I want to be a consultant, or did I want to be a tea maven?” Cogan told OJMCHE in 2015. “I should have chosen the tea maven!”
Cogan is survived by her three children, Mark Cogan (P.J.), Sue van Brocklin (Robert) and Leonard Cogan; her six grandchildren, Joshua and Annabelle Cogan; Elizabeth (Bryan Rahija), Kate and Meg van Brocklin; and Rodrigo Cogan Ponce; and two great-grandchildren, Jovie and Remy Rahija.
A memorial service was held Sunday, Dec. 22, at Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland. Donations in Cogan’s memory can be directed to the Congregation Neveh Shalom Tribute Fund and the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.

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