Elisabeth Page Keppler

1954 - 2022

Elisabeth Page Keppler

Winston-Salem, MA -

Elisabeth Page "Lise" Keppler, 68, died peacefully on October 29, 2022, at the Kate B. Reynolds Hospice Home in Winston-Salem, NC with family and friends nearby. Lise was born in Northampton, Massachusetts on September 18, 1954 to Anne Fisher Keppler and Philip Keppler Jr. Kind and gentle from the start, she never lost her loving nature and her belief in doing what was right.

Born into a musical household, Lise enjoyed singing with her family and in the choir at St. John's Church. Her voice was so good that she began working with professional vocal instructor and lifelong mentor, Adrienne Auerswald. Over much of her life Lise sang in choral groups including for many years the Winston-Salem Symphony Chorus. She majored in voice at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota and was also a skilled seamstress, designing and creating costumes for many theater productions.

At age 6 Lise embarked with her family on her father's yearlong sabbatical to Europe where she attended school in Germany and England. She was the very image of a beautiful German madchen and she totally rocked a dirndl.

Lise graduated from Northampton High School in 1972, and besides her years attending Carleton in her early adulthood, she also took part in an Outward Bound program, canoeing and solo camping in the Boundary Waters.

After college she worked with various companies in Chicago and Seattle before returning to the east coast to live and work in Boston. In the early 1990s she took a position in Raleigh, NC but eventually left the corporate world to attend North Carolina Central University in Durham where she earned a Masters in Library Science. Finally, Lise would say, she had discovered what she was meant to do. Librarianship became her calling.

In 1996 Lise accepted a position as a children's librarian at Forsyth County Public Library in Winston-Salem, NC and was celebrated for her childlike delight, a quality that endeared her to all young people. Except for a brief hiatus when she returned to Northampton to care for her mother, she remained at Forsyth and served the public in many capacities until her retirement in 2017.

In time Lise moved on to reference and local history positions and eventually became supervisor of Technical Services at the library. Lise was known as a dynamo on committees, quick to volunteer for complicated projects that she completed accurately and with remarkable speed. She was instrumental in many initiatives that benefited library customers including the creation of a system-wide book ordering system and the library's participation in a statewide material sharing program known as Cardinal. Such achievements and her devotion to accuracy and fairness resulted in her peers bestowing upon her the library's employee of the year award, known as the Ann R. Gehlen Award, in 2000. In her last days she summed up her passion for reading and libraries with, "It doesn't matter WHAT you learn but THAT you learn."

Lise leaves three siblings and their spouses, Catherine (Mark Gaydos), John (Kim Fine) and Peter (Debra Pollack); nieces Carrie Gaydos, Luba Gaydos, Taylor Cassidy and

nephew William Keppler-Robinson She also leaves many loving friends in her adopted home of Winston-Salem including her friends and caregivers Billy King and Michael DeWitt.

Donations in Lise's memory may be made to:

Second Harvest Food Bank

3655 Reed St.

Winston-Salem, NC 27107

https://www.secondharvestnwnc.org

SECU Family House

1970 Baldwin Lane

Winston-Salem, NC 27103

https://www.familyhousews.org/donate/