BOULDER — Meredith Emerson was remembered by more than 250 people Friday as an exuberant, smiling young woman who in the words of one friend was “the whole package.”
At the First Presbyterian Church in Boulder, a picture of Emerson with her beloved black Labrador retriever Ella sat on a table covered with an embroidered white cloth.
On the same table was an urn that contained the 24-year-old’s ashes.
Feet away were her parents, Susan and Dave Emerson of Longmont, and her younger brother, Mark.
Emerson, formerly of Longmont, disappeared while hiking with Ella on New Year’s Day in the woods of north Georgia. Her body was found Jan. 7, and a 61-year-old drifter, Gary Michael Hilton, has been arrested in her death.
The Rev. Jane Filkin read a letter in which a high school friend, Kirsten Lyons, summed up the feelings of many who gathered.
“My first memory of Meredith was seeing her around the high school,” Lyons recalled. “We were both brand-new freshmen, both having just moved from other states.
“She was the whole package: bright, beautiful, warm, clever, happy . . . We would often get together to work on projects or homework and then play with our dogs or watch silly television shows . . . ,” said Lyons.
Lyons recalled that the foundation of their friendship was their “mutual love of laughter.”
During the memorial service, dozens of pictures of a smiling, beaming Meredith Emerson looked down on the people attending.
They showed her with Ella, a bevy of other dogs, cats, her dad, her brother, her mother. They showed her beaming in a snowstorm, laughing while holding a soccer ball in her soccer uniform.
At the beginning of the service, Jamie Emerson, her second cousin, sang “Amazing Grace” and remembered Meredith as a “bright, exuberant, cheerful and loving person.”
“I saw a beautiful young lady full of compassion, a young lady who loved her family,” Jamie Emerson said.
“Let us share her compassion for life . . . her compassion for animals,” he said.
Two of her best friends, Laura Lewis and Amy Sorensen, remembered her as the sweetest of people.
“Meredith was gorgeous. She was incredibly intelligent,” said Lewis. “Meredith was such a good girl . . . (with) . . . an incredible heart and an incredible mind.”
Sorensen directly addressed the urn containing her friend’s ashes and told her, “You had a great love for life.”
Turning to the mourners, Sorensen added: “Meredith had a thirst for life and knowledge. We are all going to miss Meredith, but she will live on through her friends and family.”
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
