Elif Ogan, 48, beloved daughter of Pekin and Christine Ogan; sister of Banu Ogan of Santa Fe, New Mexico; and partner of Anthony Hernandez, Portland, Oregon, left our world on July 2 in Portland. We are all deeply saddened by her passing.
Born in Bloomington, Indiana on July 18, 1976, she graduated from Bloomington North High School in 1994. She attended Antioch College and Indiana University. Her early interest in jewelry making blossomed when she learned the art of lampworking while working with Jari Sheese, owner of Boca Loca Beads on the Square in Bloomington. Jari quickly became elif’s mentor. They were reunited in Portland when Jari moved to nearby Vancouver Washington and continued her glass artistry.
In 2000 she met Simon Travis at the Starwood Festival in Sherman, New York. They lived together in Austin, Texas from 2001 to 2007 where she made and sold her beadwork. Eventually they decided that Austin was not the place they wanted to stay, and made their way to Portland, Oregon, where elif had jobs at a yarn store and then at a bead store, where she taught jewelry-making classes and worked as a member of the staff. She later began making and selling her own lampworked jewelry full time, and then started an online store where people from all over the world ordered both her beads and finished work.
Elif’s relationship with Simon eventually ended, but they remained very close friends. Then In June 2015, she met Anthony Hernandez at the Pedalpalooza Bike Festival in Portland. Portland is a city focused on cycling, and both Anthony and elif were major enthusiasts, taking their first bike trip together in 2017 to Vancouver, Canada. Their mutual love of biking evolved into a relationship that lasted to the end. However, the incurable cancer that was diagnosed in 2021 soon meant that elif could no longer accompany Anthony on those bike trips. Several rounds of various chemotherapies took their toll on her body, finally leaving her to spend most of her time in bed and to enter the hospice program at home, served by the excellent Housecall Providers.
After entering Hospice, friends from Indiana, Texas, and Washington along with a large group of Portland friends surrounded her with love and brought her joy in her last months. Close to the end, she was even able to organize a musical evening in her back yard with the friends who sang and played instruments with her regularly at an open mike bar in the city.
Elif was a voracious reader covering the walls of most rooms in her home with books. Even as a small child she would often spout some obscure fact at the dinner table, prompting her sister to ask how she knew that. Her smug reply? “I read it in a book.”
She and Anthony adopted two part-British shorthair cats, Oliver and Jacob, who were the love of their lives. Anthony continues to help them adjust to life without elif.
Though born and raised in the U.S., elif loved her father’s homeland, Türkiye. As a child she learned only a few phrases of the Turkish, but with the help of Duolingo and some extended travel to Türkiye, she learned enough of the language as an adult to converse more comfortably.
