Tough as nails but nurturing and inviting to anyone she met. She opened her doors for everyone, any visitors were welcomed with homemade goods and her guest book.
Elfriede Prefontaine, the mother of one of the most iconic distance runners of all time, died Tuesday at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield after suffering a fall at a Eugene assisted living facility 12 days ago. She was 88.
She was 50 when her son died at the age of 24 in a single car crash on Skyline Boulevard, east of the University of Oregon campus near Hendricks Park on May 30, 1975. Only a few hours before the car crash, she was in the stands watching him as he won his last race ever at Hayward Field.
She was born in a small village outside Berlin on March 4, 1925.
As a military wife to Ray Prefontaine, who was stationed in Germany, she was brought to the U.S. as a German citizen and settled in Coos Bay. They would go dancing on the weekends together. She also loved to travel and would go to Uma, Ariz. every year until Ray couldn’t do so any longer due to health issues. Ray passed away in 2004 at 84.
Pat Tyson, who was Steve’s teammate and roommate at the UO and a family friend of the Prefontaines, said she was the classic German and that Pre’s well-known determination was instilled in him by his mother.
“She was real strong, very discipline and was a very hard worker,” Tyson said.
While Steve was at the UO, Elfriede and her husband would drive three hours from Coos Bay to Eugene in order to watch their son compete in every home track meet. On these days, she and her husband would visit Steve and Tyson at their trailer home to catch up.
Tyson remembers Elfriede would ask Steve lots of questions, just like any other mom. Steve had a good relationship with his parents and never spoke negatively about her. Tyson says Steve was never embarrassed of his parents.
“Steve would always wave to them before the competition,” Tyson said. “And afterwards would always go up and see them.”
She attended every Prefontaine Classic meet, save for this year’s due to illness. But even when she was virtually blind from macular degeneration that occurred in the late 1990s and when she had a stroke in 2010 that damaged the visual cortex in the back of her brain, she was in the stands at Hayward.
“She was a fighter, she’d never want to give in,” Tyson said.
A memorial service in Coos Bay will be announced later.
Elfriede will be buried in the family’s plot at Sunset Memorial Park in Coos Bay, next to her mother, husband and son.