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Published on 06/12/1995 All articles from this issue

Ann Cochran, taught elementary school for nearly 30 years

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By Marjorie Kellogg-Van Rheeden

Special to the Town Crier

Ann Cochran, a Los Altos Hills resident who taught in local elementary schools for nearly 30 years, was eulogized by friends and family during a memorial service at the Palo Alto Universalist-Unitarian Churnullch on Sunday, June 4.

Ann died on May 22, following a two-year battle with cancer that went undetected until after her retirement in 1993.

An angel theme for the service was manifested on the dais by a garden angel that held an urn of flowers. A poster in the foyer contained a poem that concluded, "If we were all more like angels the world would be a heavenly place."

During her childhood, Ann loved to sing and walk alone in the woods near her home, then write stories and poems about it. Her daughter, Sheryl, read two of them.

Anna Mae Howard was born in the rural town of Villa Grove, Ill. She attended the University of Illinois in Urbana.

In 1945, Ann was working in a Chicago restaurant when she met a soldier, Reynold Cochran. He invited her to a ball game that afternoon before he left for New Jersey to be discharged from the Army. They exchanged addresses, promised to write and said goodbye.

Their romance blossomed in 1946 when they met again in New Jersey. They wed that September, then continued their university courses for the next few years.

In 1953 Sheryl Ann was born. Three years later, Mark completed their family circle. In 1960, they moved West to stay.

Ann began teaching in 1964. While pioneering new methods such as team teaching and movement exploration, Mark became ill. He died in 1978.

During their son's long illness, Ann and Rey found solace in the Indian teachings of transcendental meditation. They subsequently attended many world peace assemblies conducted by that group.

Ann loved to travel and sought adventure, education, and spiritual enlightenment in places like Switzerland, India and the Philippines.

In early May, Ann's parents, Ted and Ruth Howard, from Camargo, Ill., and her brother, Ted Howard, Jr., from St. Petersburg, Fla., visited. "We did a lot of celebrating," Ann said at the time. "We even had a Thanksgiving dinner, since we had not spent that holiday together in many years.

"It was a miracle," she said with a laugh, "because Daddy hadn't been here in 25 years and hated to travel, especially in airplanes."

Friends who visited during her last week of life remember a radiant, cheerful Ann whose sense of humor continued to be a strong thread in the fabric of her life.

The inner strength that Ann had found while communing with nature as a child prepared her for a full life of enjoyment, an ability to deal with adversity, and became a building block for the loving relationship that developed in her classrooms and within her home.

Ann willingly and joyfully accepted the invitation to sit on the side of the angels in what she anticipated would be an even better, more beautiful life. She also knew that the real angels in her life had been her loving caretakers husband Rey, and daughter Sheryl.

The family supports People Against Cancer, P.O. Box 10, Othos, Iowa, 50569.

Marjorie Kellogg-Van Rheeden is a Los Altos Hills free-lance writer who was also born in Villa Grove, Ill.