In 1962 Eugene "Gene" Bradley Ellis was promoted to Major in the Delaware State Police. Five years and a few months later he would be a Colonel in the State Police and dead.
Colonel Ellis was born in Delmar, Delaware in 1926 and graduated Delmar High School. He attended Salisbury State Teacher College. He served in the US Navy during WW2. In 1947 he joined the Delaware State Police. In 1949 he would marry, in Snow Hill Maryland, Ida Mae Russell, daughter of Edward Purnell Russell and Belle W Wilkins Russell. Eugene Ellis was the son of Paul Kinzer Ellis and Ada Bradley Ellis. Paul K. worked for the railroad and was a councilman for the town and on the Board of Education. Ida and Gene Ellis lived in Georgetown, Delaware.
While sitting on a panel on law enforcement at a Kiwanis meeting at Alexander's Restaurant in Dover he had a heart attack. A second one followed that night while he was in hospital and he died. He was 41 years old. He was within 15 days of retiring from the Delaware State police with 20 years in.
Ida Mae Ellis would live another 45 years working as a secretary for Justice John J. McNeely. She supported Del Tech and the Delaware State police Museum. She would die in 2012. Her father had died of spanish influenza in 1918 when she was one year old. Her mother, Belle, spent 58 years as a widow, in turn Ida, spent 45 years as a widow.
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