Eleanor Bird Light, a newspaper copy editor and graduate of Mount Holyoke College, was born on March 6, 1947 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey to William Underhill Light, a marine insurance adjustor, and his wife Eleanor Bird McElrath, a 1932 graduate of Mount Holyoke College and an elementary school librarian. Light attended the River Dell Regional High School until her entrance to Mount Holyoke College in September of 1965. She majored in religion and graduated in 1969. She then obtained a Master of Arts in Teaching from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In 1976, Light worked as an Associate Editor for Prentice- Hall, Inc. and then re-located to Memphis, Tennessee where she worked as a newspaper copy editor for the Commercial Appeal.