By Lawn Griffiths
Ellen Eduarda “Warda” Yates was a strong Tempean who always had something important to say. Her roots in the community spanned four generations. Historic preservation was her calling. The arts were her love. She fiercely spoke out about changes abounding on the landscape of her city, and she was fervent, to the end, in advocating for many causes.
Her family collaborated on her obituary and described her as a lifelong learner who had “an almost infinite number of interests. … She had an intrinsic sense of community, she cared and connected in ways that built and strengthened her community.”
Eduarda’s family was the last to formally live in the historic 1892 Niels Petersen House, the looming Queen Anne Victorian house at Priest Drive and Southern Avenue, once considered a ranch home in the Tempe countryside. They lived there from 1951 to 1968, and for a time thereafter, it was owned by the Tempe Oddfellows, and now, by the City of Tempe.
Eduarda, who was commonly called Warda, died September 1, 2023, at her home in Tempe’s Alameda Estates neighborhood at the age of 87.
The daughter of artist parents, she was an accomplished painter and art educator in her own right. Her home is a gallery of paintings by the Harter family.
She was born on October 19, 1935, in Tempe, the daughter of Tom and Helen O’Connor Harter. She was a descendant of the Woolf pioneer family who arrived in Tempe in 1888. Eduarda’s maternal great-uncle and well-known author Jack O’Connor, penned a novel, “Horse and Buggy West” about the Woolf family pioneer days there.
Eduarda would reminisce that when the family moved into the Petersen House “there were two fireplaces and plenty of space for Christmas stockings.” Her grandmother, Ida Woolf O’Connor, was a manual arts teacher at the I.D. Payne Training School where she designed and crafted the first large display of the three Maji, camels and star for Tempe Butte that was installed for the Christmas season for many years.