I received a polite email this week from a distant cousin of our friend, Ann Keppel, a UH professor of education who passed away ten years ago this month.

Ann’s cousin wrote:

She was my cousin—distantly—as I am related to the Keppel/Pralle/Hauser clans of Western Wisconsin. I believe that my grandmother grew up with her. I didn’t know of Ann until after she had passed away, but I’ve always felt that I missed out. My family doesn’t produce many intellectuals, and when I read her obituary in the La Crosse Tribune in 2002, I thought that she would have been such an important role model. I even visited Honolulu in 2001 and could have met her then. I have been recently revisited with a desire to learn more about her.

She wrote me after finding the small online memorial I created back in 2002.

Ann Keppel was remarkable in her ability to nurture friendships for the long term, with members of her extended family, colleagues, students, friends of colleagues and students and family, people she met in so many different ways. We first met Ann through good friends of ours back around 1969 or 1970, then reconnected with her much later when Meda joined the faculty of the Women’s Studies Program (now the Women’s Studies Department) at the University of Hawaii, where Ann was the program director at the time.

After Ann’s unexpected death, I was able to gather written recollections of her from a number of her many friends.

I’ve just spent some time reading through many of them for the first time in a decade. Together, they create an amazing portrait of a remarkable woman, not a banner headlines kind of person, but a good, solid, sensible, sensitive, and reliable friend. There is poetry in these memories, a reflection of Ann, I suppose. I’m sharing a few snippets, and invite you to wade in and read more.

From the late Ron Johnson, a UH psychologist:

We shared growing up in the rural/small town mid-West. We often talked about the remarkable tolerance people had toward neighbors, some of them very strange, and the intolerance they showed toward outsiders, no matter how seemingly normal.

We both went through McCarthyism and the witch-hunt. We learned how little faith one could have in the courage of university administrators, most faculty and students, and the American Association of University Professors.

I wrote, in part:

We shared a belief that the world can and should be a better place than it’s allowed to be, but Ann added an appreciation of both the broad tides and minute details of history. She had a mind for those details, a passion for them. You could always learn from her, and we did.

She was invariably the first person to call whenever one of my stories made it into print, and usually one of the only people to immediately ask about the juicy unpublished details.

We also shared a love of cats, and watching Ann’s feline interactions was always a joy. She could sweep any of her cats off their feet and clamp them firmly in the crook of her arm while administering wholesale affection. It was a most awkward position for the cats, but they never fussed or complained, having long since learned there was little room for resistance if Ann wanted to fold you into her life.

That was a lesson, I suppose, that we all learned over the years, cats and people alike.

From Sheila Lumsden, who grew up next door.

She taught me that you didn’t always have to pretend‚ and say the polite stuff. That you didn’t always have to have a significant other. That you should speak the truth, enjoy what you have, appreciate good Classical music and eat the mangos while they’re ripe and always stop to talk to the cats.

I hope to see her again someday.

From Pat Scheans in Portland:

We emailed each other frequently (some times daily) as Ann’s appreciation of technology grew. Although she wrote regularly before computers, her handwriting was often illegible. (I was called upon to decipher it by other family members). Many newspaper articles arrived with no clue as to their significance, the annotation unreadable. She also managed to slur typewritten words (having sent an email or two after a martini or two), but the connection was always there.

There is a void in my life. I sent her Mother’s Day cards and olives stuffed with garlic, she sent me correspondence of my father’s and Hawaiian baby names. (I am an Anthropologist’s daughter working as a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner). What will I do without her?

The UH Board of Regents voted at their meeting this week to make the Women’s Studies B.A. degree permanent. Ann would have loved to be around for this moment, as she was such a big part of building the department. Meda and I later sat on our deck as the sun set over on the other side of the mountains, and raised our glasses in a toast to Ann. We do miss her.