- Date Of Birth: March 2, 1935
- Date Of Death: January 19, 2017
- State: Colorado
Beatrice Manuela Cohen Koch, 81, passed away in the care of hospice on January 19, 2017.
Born two months premature, she was Boulder’s first incubator baby. The hospital had to go all the way to Denver for an incubator.
She was born to Joseph W. Cohen, a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado as well as the director of the honors program, and Beatrice Burrus Cohen, the assistant dean of women at the same university. “Little” Bea grew up in Boulder with her sister, Josephine Cohen. She and her sister had many happy days together growing up in the shadows of the university and in the company of the many students that lived throughout the years in their large house on the corner of 11th and Euclid.
She received a four-year full scholarship to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. At Reed, she majored in philosophy. She began her love of biking here and was one of the few women on the men’s racing team. After college, she returned briefly to Boulder, and she claimed that she had Boulder’s first ten-speed bike. Unfortunately, college was also where she started smoking, a habit that would much later in life lead to COPD and having to live constantly attached to an oxygen tube.
At Reed she met Christopher Koch and fell in love. They shared a passion for the outdoors and hiking. They married and had two daughters, Rachel and Galen. After eight years, the marriage ended in divorce and she continued to raise her girls in in New York City. A friend said, “She was always dedicated to the well-being of others.” Perhaps this and her determination for justice began during the McCarthy era when her father and other colleagues and friends of the family were accused of being communists. Be later took an active role in the women’s movement and the equal rights movement. She later worked for the American Civil Liberties Union and then for Legal Action Center in New York. In New York she became very involved with the Arts Students League and took many classes to develop her talents in drawing.
When she became intrigued with ancient Mayan culture in the 1990s, she plunged into that curiosity with characteristic enthusiasm, reading incessantly, attending conferences, and traveling to Guatemala and Mexico with professional linguists and colleagues who were seeking to understand the mysteries of Mayan hieroglyphic writing and iconography. She found some of her best friends in this passionate group of “Mayanistas”. Her compassionate nature, her intellect, and her artistic talents all found good expression with this group. Her beautiful hieroglyphic drawings illustrated one internationally published paper on the site of Dos Caobas. She was a founding member and continuing supporter of MAM (Mayas for Ancient Mayan, formerly the Friends of the Maya) that helps indigenous Maya people rediscover their ancient heritage.
In 2004 she moved back to Boulder to be closer to her two daughters and to be closer to the mountains she loved. By this time, she had already been diagnosed with Emphysema.
Advanced stages of COPD, and a series of falls eventually took her life.
Her sister, Josephine Cohen of Placerville, California, survives her as well as her two daughters in Boulder, Colorado, Rachel and Galen (Mark).
