Adulthood became Bess Wyche. She’d lived in New York, gone to college in Virginia, landed a job in Washington and was thinking about going back to school one day for another degree.
“Like so many eager, bright, young people, she was beginning to enjoy the fruits of her education and hard work,” said her mother, Ellen Adair Wyche, of Atlanta. “She was finally out on her own.”
Elizabeth Adair Wyche, of Washington and Atlanta, died Thursday at Emory University Hospital from complications of a respiratory infection. She was 28. A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m., Tuesday at First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta. Her body was cremated by SouthCare Cremation and Funeral Society, Marietta.
In less than two years, Ms. Wyche’s life had more highs and lows than a roller coaster. Even the last weeks of her life were a mix of emotions, she was a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding and her family was optimistic her health would improve.
“She was absolutely determined to be in that wedding,” her mother said. “Another friend asked her to be a bridesmaid last year, but she had to miss it because of the bone marrow transplant.”
In early January 2011, while training for a marathon, Ms. Wyche began feeling ill, her parents said. Six weeks later she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. After 10 months of intensive treatment in Washington, she was declared in remission, but in a matter of weeks the leukemia returned. She traveled to The University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Center in early 2012, where she received a bone marrow transplant, which was deemed successful. But by August, the leukemia returned again. She returned to Atlanta in mid-September, with plans to receive treatment at Emory, and return to her life in Washington in January 2013.
“Bess did not see herself just coming back to Atlanta and getting a job,” said her father, Henry M. Wyche, of Atlanta. “She wanted to live a life of purpose.”
To prepare for that life, Ms. Wyche, a 2002 graduate of the Galloway School, engineered her own major at Hollins University, in Roanoke, Va. She combined her interests in art and communications and earned an interdisciplinary degree in visual studies and art history. And although her current job as the executive assistant to the chief financial officer of the Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, had nothing to do with art, she enjoyed it immensely, her parents said.
“From the time she was a little thing, she had an insatiable curiosity for learning,” Mrs. Wyche said. “She’d always had this artistic bent, but she took pride in how much she was learning from this business experience, and she looked forward to bringing it full-circle with her artistic aspirations. She was really just getting started.”
In addition to her parents, Ms. Wyche is survived by her brothers, Henry “Hank” Wyche, Jr. of Houston, Texas and Gordon Wyche of Atlanta.
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