Elaine Lorillard

Background

She was born as Elaine Guthrie in Tremont, Maine. She was the daughter of Walter Edward Guthrie and Eliza Pray Guthrie. Her father owned a printing company in Boston, Master of Arts, and her mother was classical singer.

Education

Elaine attended the New England Conservatory of Music, and in 1943 she went to work for the Red Cross, where she taught piano and painting to orphans in Naples, Italy.

Career

In Naples she first was exposed to Jazz. She had also been exposed to jazz while living in New York City before joining the Red Cross. Her husband gave a $20,000 grant to a festival, the first of which in July 1954 attracted 11,000 fans.

Mr.

Lorillard continued to support the festival until 1961. The Lorillards maintained even after their divorce in the seventies that the Newport was founded by Elaine and Louis Lorillard as a nonprofit organization, proceeds of which would have gone to promote the education of musicians. She died of an infection in the Heatherwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Newport, Rhode Island where she had been treated for MRSA at the age of 93.

Achievements

• Louis was a descendant of Pierre Lorillard, the founder of the P. Lorillard Tobacco Company in 1760.