Meredith Emerson was remembered by more than 250 people today as an exuberant young woman who, in the words of one friend, was “the whole package.”
At First Presbyterian Church in Boulder, a picture of Emerson with her beloved black Labrador retriever, Ella, sat on a table covered with a 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 on New Year’s Day with Ella in the woods of northern 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 those gathered.
“My first memory of Meredith was seeing her around the high school,” Lyons recalled. “We were both brand new freshman, 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 or paint pottery,” 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 Emerson looked down on those in attendance. They showed her with Ella and 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.”
And then turning to the rows of 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.”
Emerson’s death has had a profound impact on young women in Georgia. In the days after she was abducted and killed, classes on personal safety filled so quickly with young women that some had to be turned away. Four days after her body was found, almost 300 people — mostly women in their 20s and 30s — appeared for a safety class in Atlanta.
Toward the close of the service in Boulder today, the Rev. Filkin, turned to the letter from Emerson’s friend, Lyons.
“Nothing can diminish the beauty in the life she lived or the beauty in the legacy she’s left: an unmatched love for — and commitment to — family; a simple, yet profound, and steady faith; a love for literature and animals; an understanding that everyone and everything in this world has something to teach,” Lyons wrote.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
