Remembering Elise Lusk: 'Always striving to get better'
The Berkeley native was a vivacious and caring woman who brought others together. She was also a cancer survivor and a lifelong swimmer.
On the last morning of her life, Elise Lusk did what she'd loved to do for decades — rigorous laps at Berkeley's King Pool followed by coffee at nearby Espresso Roma, with friends. Her fellow Berkeley Aquatic Masters swimmers, the competitive program for adults.
On this Sunday morning, Jan. 26, Lusk stopped at Monterey Market after coffee to pick up a few dinner supplies.
Her younger son and his girlfriend were coming to the family's Kensington home to cook; showing off skills from a recent culinary class. Something Burmese was planned.
A family dinner with her husband, Stephen Godfrey, and sons, Patrick, 26, and his partner, and eldest Liam, 29, and his wife, was a pretty perfect way to cap the day for Lusk, said her husband and several friends. Something she'd enjoyed many times.
But moments after leaving Monterey Market, right across from Espresso Roma on Hopkins Street, a driver struck Lusk at California and Ada streets, leaving her groceries strewn in the street. It was just before 1 p.m.
The Berkeley Fire Department used a jack to free Lusk from underneath the car and then rushed her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Berkeley police are still investigating the fatal crash. The driver was an 87-year-old Oakland woman.
As Lusk's family and friends make their way through deep grief and shock, they remember the Berkeley native as a vivacious, curious and caring woman who brought others together.
Lusk, just 66, was also a cancer survivor who was finally stabilizing after years of treatment, getting stronger and cancer free.
"She was always checking up on people, sending them cards, keeping track of birthdays," Stephen Godfrey said of his wife.
"We'd be standing in line at Peet's, and she'd say, 'Oh, I think I taught that person swim lessons,'" he said, meaning from decades ago when Lusk was a young lifeguard and swim teacher for the city of Berkeley. "And she'd tap them on the arm."
She was always right, Godfrey said. He'd watch the enthusiastic reunions.
Lusk loved celebrations, family gatherings small or large, meeting up with her many friends, having people at their house, he said.
"She was our glue," Godfrey said. "We've lost our glue."
Lusk loved a good bakery, a hot latte, the color pink
Born and raised in Berkeley, Lusk never strayed far from the region for long, people close to her said, except to travel, just one of her many passions.
Others included reading, theater, movies, skiing, hiking, shopping for clothes — and bakeries, especially the family-owned Virginia Bakery on Shattuck Avenue in North Berkeley, which closed in 2018.
"She was devastated" when it closed, said Meg Shean, a 25-year friend of Lusk's and fellow masters swimmer. "She came undone."
Lusk continued the hunt for the next best bakery, Shean said. She was picky about her pastries, as well as her lattes: She liked them hot.
Lusk liked wearing bright colors, said Monica Lam, another friend and fellow swimmer.
"I particularly loved the pink in her wardrobe, including a pair of pink sneakers she'd worn for years," Lam said.
Her mother was a librarian at Berkeley’s North Branch, and her father an engineer at Chevron.
Strong advocate for the pools and swimming community
After graduating from Berkeley High, Lusk went to UC Davis and then to graduate school at University of the Pacific to become a speech pathologist.
She was always into physical fitness, for the health of it, but also for the sheer satisfaction of a hard workout, friends said.
"She was someone who was always striving to get better, always taking lessons and working on technique," Shean said.
Lusk was among a still-close group that launched Berkeley's first masters swim program around 1980, said Wayne Luk, another masters swimmer, who had known Lusk since she was in high school and they were both city lifeguards.
At the time, Berkeley didn't have an adult lap swim program, he said. So the lifeguards, including Lusk, hatched a proposal they took to the city.
It worked.
The founding group still has reunions, still stays in close contact, Luk said.
"The fact that there were seven of us [swimmers] that were with her 15-20 minutes before the accident, it devastated us," Luk said of the morning Lusk died. "The old lifeguard group, they are all devastated as well."
Luk views Lusk's love of the pool as more than sport or fitness. It was also about service, he said. As a lifeguard and swim teacher.
"Elise really enjoyed teaching swimming," Luk said. "I think about it in terms of the impact she had on the world. There were many, many people who learned to be comfortable and enjoy the water because of her."
He added: "And there will be some, a few, whose lives were saved because of her. This is the impact of teaching people how to swim."
Emilie Raguso
Elise Lusk: A life of service
Service, giving to others, was also integral to Lusk's career as a speech therapist, friends and family said.
She worked at the city-run Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in San Francisco for almost her entire career, retiring in 2020.
Her specialty was traumatic brain injury patients, said Godfrey, a retired optometrist. "She felt like she was trying to make a difference in these people's lives."
Often, he said, her patients weren't likely to make a full recovery.
But Lusk found meaning in helping them with incremental improvements, small things that could make a huge difference for them.
"Like to swallow food or communicate with their loved ones," he said, even if this communication wasn't clear speech, but involved moving their hands or eyes.
Lusk saw herself as a kind of go-between between her patients and their social worlds, Godfrey said: "The glue."
Their sons went to Berkeley's School of the Madeleine followed by St. Mary's College High School in Albany and, though this was years ago, Lusk stayed close with these communities.
Lusk and Godfrey were raised Catholic, and comfortable with Catholic schools, but they weren't particularly religious, he said.
Their beliefs were more of a: "People should treat each other well, and there's somewhat of a karma out there."
Despite cancer diagnosis, Elise Lusk 'was a fighter'
In 2022, Lusk was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.
She'd experienced some new aches and pains and had suspicions, Shean said. Which her friends pooh-poohed.
But her hunch proved true.
Treatment, which included stem cell transplant, was arduous and exhausting, Godfrey said. Lusk faced it with quiet determination.
In private moments, she could be sad, disappointed. But she was a proactive self-advocate, researching in detail, questioning her doctors, he said.
Their backgrounds as health professionals helped, Godfrey said: "She was a fighter, she wanted to get through this."
And she was.
In the year before her death, Lusk was getting strength back.
She was back in the pool on a regular basis. Her medical team had given her the green light to do more. She planned to go skiing, and on a trip to France.
On the Sunday after Elise's death, her King Pool masters group hit the pool like usual.
But this time, they did things differently.
They put a glowing candle on a kickboard and swam it down her regular lane, two. "So Elise could get in a few more laps," Shean said.
