1media/RE outtakes, 2.24.png2017-12-09T09:59:13-08:00Elder in Later Life8plain2017-12-13T06:02:46-08:00By the mid-to-late 1930s, Elder began to slowly move away from the limelight. Aviation wasn't much of a sensational topic anymore, and with WWII about to commence, the public had their mind elsewhere. Little if any publicity on Elder circulated in the 1940s, and at this point she would have been tending to her son with her fifth husband (Elder had six husbands in total). She did not return to public attention until 1955, when she started working as a secretary at a Flight Test Division for none other than famed director Howard Hughes. While nobody else at the aerospace company knew who she was, Hughes remembered her feat, and according to a Hughes biographer, wrote in "YWH" (you will hire) at the top of her application to secure her obtaining the position. She worked for him until 1957, then spent the last twenty years of her life with her final husband, Ralph King. She died on October 9, 1977 in her San Francisco home, and was then cremated and scattered over the ocean through an airplane window.
