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Home » Campus News Latest » Obituaries » Emily W. Zopf ’81

From the husband of Emily Zopf, Bob Bresnahan:

Emily, my dearest wife of 37 years, died today (Jan. 9, 2020) at 4:30 pm.

Today is our 37th anniversary and she died around the time we were married by a judge at the Thurston County Courthouse 37 years ago.

We made a promise to each other that we would never go to bed when we were angry with each other. We always put our differences aside, kissed, hugged and stated our love for each other. She was a wonderful wife and cared for me always, just as I cared for her.

Emily Zopf was a wonderful, creative artist, a fine woodworker, an amazing solver of puzzles, a fine mother to our beloved son, Kris, valedictorian of her Laboratory Science program at Oregon Health Sciences University and of her high school class in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She graduated from Antioch College with a B.A. and earned an MFA from the University of Washington.

She designed our timber frame house in the mountains east of Taos and built our wood shop with me. She said that building the house was the happiest time of her life. Em worked for 10 years at the Holy Cross Hospital Lab in Taos. She was the person to go to if you wanted answers and solutions. She loved working in the lab and felt a deep sense of service to our adopted community of Taos.

Em loved nature and the wilderness. We spent many days hiking in the mountains of Washington, Oregon and New Mexico, and we kayaked Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands and the inland passage between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. Emily was very frugal and a conservationist supreme. We’ve wrung most of the carbon emissions out of our house, charge our Tesla from our solar panels and we rarely flew. Emily and I did The New York Times crossword puzzle together virtually every day from early 1998.

We shared our lives together completely, and I will carry her with me in memories until I die.

Bob Bresnahan lives in Taos, NM.

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