Eva Eckert

Eva Luella Eckert of Fort Collins died on June 24, 2008. Eva was born on Nov. 7, 1913, in Green Township, Ohio, to A.F. and Mary J. Prince Moon. Eva attended Ohio State University, earning a degree in home economics in 1935, with a double major in child development and dietetics. While offered scholarships for further studies in both areas, she chose to marry her college sweetheart, Phil S. Eckert, who she met in an agricultural journalism class at OSU. In the next ten years, Jerry, Susan and Karen filled out the family. Their life together led them across the globe to many places and cultures. Phil alternated between university positions in the US and diplomatic assignments overseas. Eva and her family live one year or more in Mexico, Costa Rica, France, Germany and Ecuador. Here at home, they lived many years each in Ohio, Montana, Arizona, Kansas, and Virginia. During these years, Eva was largely a home maker, building an intellectually and emotionally rich, values-based life for her children. She was in many ways, the Eckert family matriarch. Eva's own professional work was varied. She taught the Textiles Lab at Montana State College in Bozeman and supervised a diplomatic nursery school in Germany. After her husband's medical retirement, she entered banking at age 58, rising from teller-trainee to senior branch manager, then to Vice President with oversight for ten branches of a major Virginia based savings and loan. She retired at 70, moved to Arizona where she re-entered banking for another decade. After her second retirement at 80, she earned her 5000 hour pin as a volunteer at Tucson Medical Center. She moved to Colorado in 2002 to live closer to her son's family. She was a life long member of Greenview United Church of Christ in Shelby county Ohio and served over 40 years in PEO, a woman's service club. She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband and her brother Robert Moon. Her legacy lives on in her children, Jerry Eckert of Fort Collins, Susan Eckert of Bellevue, Wash., and Karen Eckert Sanzone of Ocean View, Dele. Other survivors include her sister, Martha Hasenpflug of Toledo, Ohio; sister-in-law, Pearl Sommer Moon of Shelby county Ohio, two nieces, two nephews, seven grand-children and eight great-grandchildren. Cremains will be interred at a later date along side her husband in Ohio. Eva's family is, as was she, incredibly grateful to the loving and highly professional staffs of various Columbine Health Systems institutions and of Hospice of Larimer County. Her final months were greatly eased and filled with warm human contact thanks to all of you.