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Meril Yu OBITUARY

Meril Penn Yu, age 81, died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest on May 24, 2026, while doing something she loved: scuba diving in Belize. She leaves her immediate family: husband, Fred; son, Michael; daughter, Lauren, son-in-law, Arnaud Sahuguet, and two twin grandchildren, Alice and Henri Sahuguet, as well as a sister, Sara Penn-Strah, brother-in-law, Mike Penn-Strah, and many cousins and their children. Her parents, Carl and Ruth Penn, both predeceased her.

She was born Meril Ruth Penn in Ludington, MI on April 24, 1945. The family moved to Jackson, MI and later to Birmingham, MI where Meril finished grade school and high school. She received her B.A. in 1967 from the University of Michigan, after which she taught English at Belleville H.S. in Belleville, MI for two years before returning to the University of Michigan for a Master’s degree, where she met Fred Yu.

After she and Fred married in 1970, they moved to New York, where she was an educational therapist at the Brooklyn Veterans Administration Hospital while Fred completed law school. That experience inspired her to earn another master’s degree in speech pathology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She worked as a speech pathologist in the Sheridan, Littleton and Cherry Creek Public School Districts until retirement, finding both joy and satisfaction in her work with students with speech and learning difficulties.

She was an accomplished scuba diver, with over 500 dives at the time of her death, and was proud to still be diving in her 80’s. She loved all children, especially her own and her grandchildren, and she could not resist noticing and engaging with any baby or toddler she might encounter, however casually. Blessed with a buoyant positive personality, she made friends easily. She was a lifelong participant in Jacki Sorenson’s Aerobic Dance. She loved flowers and gardening, reading, cooking, playing crosswords and word games. She also enjoyed the creativity of handicrafts, having pursued sewing, macrame, beading and basket making at various times in her life.

Meril’s retirement years were filled with travel, and in later years she was particularly fond of cruising: sailing down the Nile, Rhine and Mosel Rivers, up the Danube, through the Chilean fjords and, earlier in the year, navigating Japan’s Inland Sea en route to South Korea. She had her eyes set on the fjords of Norway and the Douro River in Portugal next. Perhaps her favorite destination, however, was a quick flight to New York City to see her grandchildren.

Despite residing in Colorado for over 50 years, Meril never lost her affection for her home state of Michigan. She would perk up when she happened to notice a University of Michigan football game on TV. She believed that being a Michigander also meant showing an unabashed passion for U of M and its football team. If she met another Michigander or even saw someone wearing a gold “M” or the maize and blue school colors, she was likely to shout, “Go Blue!” or even break into a chorus of “Hail to the Victors,” the team fight song.

A celebration of Meril’s life will be held at Valley Country Club, Centennial, CO on August 2, 2026 at 3:00 p.m.

Donations in her name may be made to Food Bank of the Rockies or Planned Parenthood of the Rockies.