Eva Colleen Lafferty Krebs passed quietly on July 12 after a more than twenty year courageous battle with breast cancer. Eva was the most beloved wife of Rick for thirty-seven years and loving mother of Heidi and Alec Krebs. She was also the loving grandmother of Ryan Santillo and Annabelle Leek. She was the loving daughter of Roger and Verona Lafferty of Greenfield, the loving sister of Beth and John Lafferty of Indianapolis, and Troy, Mich. and the loving niece of Gerald and Jean Lafferty of N. Chili, NY. She was the much-admired daughter-in-law of Rosalie and David Krebs of West Palm Beach, Fla.
Eva was born in Hot Springs, S.D., on Feb. 12, 1952, but spent her childhood years in Indianapolis and Greenfield. Eva graduated from Greenfield High School earning academic awards and then went to Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana, where she graduated with a degree in English and then in Law. With her devotion to others in need, after passing the Bar, she began her legal career as a legal aid attorney in Trenton, NJ, forcefully and most successfully representing indigent clients in distress with her effusive verbal and litigation skills. She and Rick then pursued the private practice of law in Trenton, when Eva left the law to pursue a long and successful career in Higher Education Administration at Rider University, and then at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, where she was the VP/Dean of Students and Admissions since 1995, retiring only due to illness. Among so many others, the greatest testament to her loving and caring character, and the one for which she most wished to be remembered professionally, was the continued long-term relationships she had with students.
Husband Rick will dearly miss her. As Eva always believed, however, “death is no more than a mix of family and friends talking and partying in the living room waiting for the next loved ones to arrive from the kitchen—it’s simply like moving from one room to the next.” Those who loved and admired Eva will count on that.
There will be no formal services and Eva’s ashes will be returned to the world she so loved in the presence of her loving family.
Memorial donations can be made to a scholarship fund to be established at Pacific University in her name, or to Legacy Hopewell House Hospice in Portland, Oregon or to The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, TN.
