Photo Courtesy of Heather Lickliter.

OURS FOR A TIME ... Celebrating the life of Meredith Hope Emerson

A young woman. Vibrant. Full of life and love. Love for language, love for literature, animals, nature and most of all, a love for people. She was brilliant, wise beyond her twenty-four years. Complex, precocious and enchanting … that was Meredith Emerson. She lived here, she played here, and she loved here. For a time, she was one of ours. She was a Gwinnettian.

Talk to anyone employed at the Gwinnett Arena and you’ll find out. She’s left a lasting and poetic imprint. If you didn’t know her personally, you probably wished you did. She’d worked there only a short time (Spring 2006 to Fall of 2007) as a sales assistant and bookkeeper but made friends quickly and effortlessly. Full of spark, Meredith found her way into the hearts of many in the time it takes to flash her amazing smile, a smile she shared generously. She was a woman of warmth and depth who possessed an alarmingly quick wit, a trait discernable even in the briefest of encounters with her. But there was so much more to know.

“It’s not often you meet someone who makes you want to be a better person, to reach farther, to climb higher. But that’s what she did for me,” says Steve Segars, Meredith’s boyfriend. She challenged people. Not with confrontation or accusation, but with a simple methodology. She was genuinely good - to the marrow. She was an intelligent, book-devouring enthusiastic soul with such profundity of articulation, she might leave the listener staggering to catch up. She challenged others just by being Meredith. So much so, those who knew her well were often swept up by her own quest to step it up in life. As Aimee, a friend and co-worker puts it, “She had a wisdom and a degree of self-actualization that the rest of us can only hope to achieve in a lifetime. An absolutely amazing person.”

Her “self-actualization” was perhaps one of the stronger threads interwoven through the tapestry of her life. Enjoying an evening hanging out with friends brought the same pleasure as a quiet night at home with a good book and her dog, Ella. It’s a synergy that brought contentment not often found in the heart of such a young woman. Ironically, coupled with her sense of inner peace was a constant stirring – a compelling sense of self-challenge, voiced fervently to her closest friends, “I want to make a difference in the world.” Perhaps her ability to inspire the best in others simply came from her own desire to do more, be better, to make a difference.

True to her drive and character, when Meredith learned of a kid’s reading program utilizing dogs to foster a sense of safety for young struggling readers, she wanted to train Ella for the task. Her own love for reading, for children, and for dogs no doubt made a perfect concoction of her interests to entice her involvement. Reading clearly enriched her life. She was known for having more books than she had room to house with one of her all time favorites, Truman Capote’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s topping her list. “I never did get that one,” says Steve, “but she loved it. She always had her nose in a book, like a sponge, soaking up knowledge.” Authors she loved ranged from Frenchman Francois de La Rochefoucauld to anything Oscar Wilde, whom she labeled, “cheeky.” Among the books she’d placed on a wish list was the French version of JK Rowling’s, Harry Potter series. She relished a book the way many savor a good meal.

Her gifted aptitude for language fueled her study of French. She started at the University of Georgia as a business major but quickly caved in to her penchant, courting the language to fluency and graduating with a degree in French literature with honors. “She could learn anything, though,” says Steve. “She was brilliant.” In an effort to challenge her boyfriend, she sent text messages to him in French forcing him to look up words and translate them to unearth her meaning. “When she had something especially poignant to say, she’d often make me work for it,” recalls Steve with a warm grin. In 2004, Meredith received the Joseph Yedlicka Scholarship for Study Abroad and in 2005, received the Cecil Willcox Award for Excellence in French. She was an officer of the University of Georgia’s chapter of the French Honor Society (Pi Delta Phi), and resident of the French Language Community at UGA.

Her love of nature, kindness to animals and in particular, her care of Ella, stood out to those who knew Meredith. Walks with her dog were frequent and undeterred. No such thing as “inclement” for the duo. Rain or shine, they walked. Thunder could just as easily add rhythm to their strolls. Aimee recalls, “When Meredith adopted Ella, a rescue dog, she even took a couple of days off work so she could get her acclimated to her new home and start training her.” That was Meredith, putting care and love into the world around her where it bloomed in her relationships, both human and otherwise. “It’s really difficult to explain, but she was just different from the rest of us. I’m average, you’re probably average, the vast majority of us are average,” says Aimee, “but she was anything but average.”

Writer, poet, linguist - Meredith embodied it all and more. Musings on page after page of her journals illustrate her mastery and passion for the written word: His beauty was exquisite agony. The poetry of his soul was gospel. And she ached to possess both, she wrote. Her capacity to set a sentence ablaze was deeply intriguing to Steve. “She’d show me a first draft of something, and then later, she’d hand me the final version. It was very telling to note the words she chose not to use in the final as much as the ones she chose to keep in.” Her ability to mix concepts of depth with a bit of whimsy is illustrated best by something she scrawled in the margin of a journal: On Being Me – My highs are high, my lows are low. But all in all, it’s a pretty sweet gig.

And a sweet gig it was for those who had the privilege of knowing the South Carolina native. “She took such good care of herself mentally, physically, emotionally,” recalls Aimee, “she was so incredibly confident in herself and her abilities.” Among her many accomplishments, Meredith had earned a green belt in Judo and blue belt in Kyuki-Do. With her dedication to her own physical and mental wellbeing through martial arts, a black belt had most certainly loomed in her future.

A creative mind and budding spirit, Meredith Hope Emerson was ours for a time. For most of us, we’ll only know her through impoverished attempts to capture this splendid creature on pages such as this. But it is a privilege and an honor to us all that she played here, she loved here. She was a Gwinnettian and will forever be remembered.

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