To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.
Sponsored by A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home & Crematory.
Anonymous
July 15, 2025
I knew Vicki briefly after her diagnosis, and considered it an honor to have met her. Such a zest for life, and such determination to make the best of each moment she was able to experience with loved ones.
Kathleen M. Velueta, nee Krzastek
July 14, 2025
I had the pleasure and honor of working under Vicki as her first doctoral student at Emory University. She was an extraordinary adviser, teacher, mentor and friend. We first met as I made my way through the required 3 semester sequence in advanced algebra that she taught. I was a nontraditional student in many ways - much older than most graduate students, more experienced in teaching mathematics than "doing" mathematics and having a nonstandard undergraduate education. Vicki´s friendly personality and teaching style made the difficult algebra classes understandable for me. Vicki then taught a course in Algebraic Geometry. I loved the topic and Vicki invited me to work with her on my PhD thesis.
I felt honored and intimidated at the same time. (I read Ha Nguyen statements about suffering from imposter syndrome. At the time, I didn´t have a name for it, but I felt the same insecurity and awe.) Vicki seemed to not entertain my doubts for a minute, she simply said "You can do this". And on we went! Vicki was endlessly supportive, guiding me bit by bit with just enough challenge to keep me working successfully. Vicki´s warm support and infectious laughter overrode any mathematical challenges. She clearly loved her life as a mathematics professor and so infected everyone else to love the work.
Kristin (Dordal) Poerschke
June 3, 2025
Colm, your eulogy of Vicki is amazing - such love that pours out through your words. What you wrote has to be one of the sweetest, from the heart eulogy´s I´ve heard. I love how music was woven through your life together. I still have the CD´s you made for Dad and Dotty. And now your comments about the "love birds" (Dad and Dotty) makes more sense - As someone who deeply loved his spouse, you recognized that love in others. I wish I had some magic words to ease your sadness and grief.
Mimi and Todd Foster
May 5, 2025
All of us at The Atlanta School loved her. My son went to school with Molly and Anne and he still keeps in touch with Anne. I am shocked and saddened that she's gone. She will be sorely missed as they say. She was brilliant and beautiful in every way.
Tara Smith
May 3, 2025
So many memories of this remarkable woman - we met at my very first conference, when I was a grad student and Vicki a recent PhD. After I finished my degree, Vicki extended to me my first invitation to present at a conference, a kindness that meant so much professionally and personally. We were pregnant with our first-borns at the same time, shared hotel rooms and hosted each other for math meetings, met up with our families including our moms while vacationing in Ireland, held the same position at NSF sequentially... I so valued our connections over the years, even though we saw each other infrequently. And that incredible smile will remain with me forever. Colm, Ann, and Molly, I know she lives on in your hearts, but oh my how her absence in this world leaves an enormous gap. My deepest sympathy on this unimaginable loss.
Nessan
April 18, 2025
Colm, Ann, and Molly:
Fran and I were so saddened to hear that Vicki has passed. We know you are heartbroken. Cornell seems just behind us. How can she be gone?
Our bestest thoughts are with you all, Nessan & Fran
Doug Bernhard
April 17, 2025
Vicki was a wonderful person. I always enjoyed her company. I will cherish my memories of her and miss her always.
Rachel Quinlan
April 17, 2025
I met Vicki only a few times but will not forget her, such a warm, kind and generous person. Her remarkable mathematical and other accomplishments speak for themselves. Sincere condolences to Colm, Ann and Molly.
Lois Kuster
April 16, 2025
Dear Colm, Ann and Molly,
May your memories of love, laughter and music sustain you.
May the passage of time bring solace.
"May the long time sun shine upon you,
All love surround you,
And the pure light within you
Guide you all the way on." (Incredible String Band)
With affection,
Lois
Josephine Yu
April 16, 2025
I am very fortunate to have known Vicki and very grateful to have been welcome in her and Colm's home many times. Vicki has been a great role model for women mathematicians. She had the work-life balance figured out, rising above the politics and the daily grind of academic life and enjoying life to the fullest. I will very dearly miss Vicki.
Frank Farris
April 15, 2025
Grateful to have known Vicki and experienced some of her irrepressible energy and joy. Sending condolences especially to Colm, who has done marvelous things for the community.
Ricardo
April 15, 2025
So sorry about it, Colm, you must feel very lonely now. She was my age.
Scott Anderson
April 14, 2025
I knew Vicki primarily through Colm, so I saw her at their parties (always a blast) and when visiting them. They put me up just a few years ago when I was in town for a funeral, and Vicki was so kind, warm and caring, but also cheerful and full of life. She was truly a delightful person, and my heart goes out to her loving family.
Marc San Soucie
April 14, 2025
Vicki and I were part of a gang of good students at our New Jersey high school, a gang which never really lost touch with each other, though time and distance played a part in less frequent visits over the years. I recall my amused bewilderment at seeing a Powerpoint deck Vicki had prepared for a conference presentation, in which slide 1 presented an "obvious" presumption that involved symbols I didn't recognize. I didn't finish the deck! Such a brilliant mind, such a warm-hearted person, and such a gorgeous crazy laugh. I will never forget Vicki. Best wishes to Colm, Molly, and Ann.
Jenny Hubbard
April 14, 2025
I met Vicki through Colm, of course, in about 2006 when he invited me to the first of many amazing dinner parties at their home. Truth be told I was a bit intimidated but I need not have worried. Vicki greeted me with that amazing million dollar smile, took me by the arm & gave me a glass of Carmenère wine, which became a firm favourite and showed me the shrine to and shared her enthusiasm for Barack Obama - "He´s going to be the next President´´. She was right of course.
We shared many times together and conversations after that. My life is richer for having known her. The last time I saw Vicki in person was September 2022 when they generously invited me to stay at their home on a visit to Atlanta. We talked politics, gardening, food and I saw firsthand their busy productive social and professional lives and how they just `got´ each other. The wit and clever jokes sparkled, their combined energy/synergy a joy to behold and the food, oh the food they cooked and enjoyed together, preferably in the company of many international friends.
My heart aches for Colm, Ann and Molly, for Carl too. RIP, Vicki.
Sending hugs, love and heartfelt condolences.
Kathleen Donohoe
April 13, 2025
Sincere and heartfelt sympathy to Colm, Ann and Molly. Thank you Vicki for hosting me so many times in your happy home.
I remember Vicki mostly socially as Colm's 'partner in kitchen' and in 'hospitality'. She was so generous in sharing many recipes, DIVERSE foods, open door hospitality and fun self, including sharing great stories, and a very caring friend. Vicki (a busy working mum and wife) graciously supported Colm ..with regard to his amazing volunteer contributions to promoting Irish music in Atlanta, which I 'lapped up' (loved). I knew she was so committed to many volunteer activities herself - including redistributing excess medical supplies (for MSF, I believe). It is extremely difficult to accept that such an incredibly talented, intellectual, effervescent and worldly lady had to succumb to such a sentence, and so abruptly. About a few weeks before her passing, she was demonstrating her voice activated computer program - always proud and uplifting. Rest in peace, dearest Vicki. Your LIGHT will SHINE on.
Donal O'Sullivan
April 13, 2025
As an old friend of Colm's I treasure the too-few times I got to meet Vicki and wish there had been more. She seemed the perfect match for Colm and it was fun to see how they enjoyed the world together. My thoughts are with Colm, Ann, and Molly.
Yossi and Michal Elran
April 13, 2025
One of Vicki's last trips before the terrible diagnosis. Unfortunately, this was the first and last time that we met, but we were honoured and privileged to have had the chance to spend a few days with her and Colm... She gave a wonderful talk on voting at our recreational math workshop. A great mathematician and a wonderful person.
Ginny Mauldin
April 12, 2025
I've always been reticent to leave my condolences on forums such as these. I typically hold my feelings over the loss of someone as special as Vicki very close and I'm not accustomed to sharing. Today, I'm making an exception.
Vicki's decline with ALS was so extremely rapid that there was really no time to process it all.
My memories of Vicki begin with meeting her and her beautiful family through a mutual friend, Kevin Madigan.
My circle of friends broadened significantly as a result of the introduction to the Powers/Mulcahy family.
Vicki and I had much in common. We got married to our respective spouses around the same time. We both has a daughter just days apart in age. We celebrated our children's successes (and fretted over their stumbles) as they grew into adulthood.
We shared the same political ideology. We loved cooking various ethnic foods (her cooking was far better than mine - oh, the homemade ice cream and vegan key lime pie)! We loved Spanish red wine, gardening (I have a blueberry bush she gave me in my garden that's still producing), crafting, among many, many other things.
The parties with dancing and singing at the top of our lungs until the wee hours are not to be forgotten.
One of Vicki's last gifts to me was encouraging me to leave a toxic work environment - which I did. It was the last time I heard Vicki speak using her actual voice. Today, I have the sit/stand desk she gave in my new workspace.
I was honored to brush her hair and feed her when she became unable to do these things for herself.
Vicki departed this earth the morning of my 59th birthday. I didn't celebrate me that day. Instead, I celebrated her and the gift of her presence in my life. I'm a better person because of Vicki touching my life. This is how I define legacy.
Thank you, Vicki. You are very missed.
Bruce Smith
April 12, 2025
We remember Vicki and Colm visiting us on Lake Superior and I was making croissants. Knowing Vicki didn't eat real butter, I made a batch with her favorite vegan butter. Much to my surprise, they turned out fine and were delicious. Their visit was a blessing to our extended family!
Richard Cook
March 24, 2025
Someone else here mentioned that Vicki was "somewhat impish". In the many years Carmela and I knew her, I really only noticed that side of her near the end. We had brought food over just a week or so before she passed, and I will always remember her rolling into the dining room in her cool electric chair. What really caught me off guard that day was the impish grin on her face and how happy she was to show off her new VoxBox.
Vicki was a special soul who will always hold a warm place in our hearts.
Terry Sweeney
March 19, 2025
Very hard to put into words the loss of someone so close to Colm, whom I've known since the early 1960s. One might expect at least another 20 to 30 years of them both in happy retirement and her updated travelogues as they went touring the US, the world and Ireland in particular. My wife Sylvia in particular was very upset when they had such a lovely chat together at a garden party some two years ago. No hint of what was to come. Having just recently had a stroke myself, we might get to know how thin that mortal coil can be to hold on to. I wish Colm and two daughters the most comforting of thoughts and emotions as they no doubt relive all their precious moments in time with Vicky, down through the years. The comfort of an after-life is that they are still waiting to join us and catch up on all yet to be achieved together.
James Kindt
March 13, 2025
I met Vicki through our community choir. She was a delightful presence, always positive, often cracking jokes, just there for the joy of the music and the community. So many of us at Oakhurst Community Choir miss her every Wednesday evening. My heart goes out to those who were closest to her. I know her memory is a blessing to all who knew her.
John Roche
March 6, 2025
Vicki´s death is such a huge loss to so many friends, family, colleagues, and students. I first met Vicki and Colm at Emory in 1987, during my year teaching there. Her quick wit, caring nature, and love of life immediately impressed me. I am grateful my friendship with Vicki and Colm has continued for all these decades, though I´m quite saddened by her passing. One memory I have is a marvelous Malaysian dinner at their house about a decade ago, when they invited my wife and I to stay over. My heartfelt condolences to Colm, Ann, Molly, and all who loved her!
Katie LaSeur
March 5, 2025
I only met Vicki a handful of times through planning trips to Atlanta for G4G, but I felt an immediate connection to her. Vicki and Colm generously invited me stay at their house. She made me feel like family, inviting me to help cook dinner or chat on the couch about our favorite reality shows or talking about our pets. I'm so glad I had the chance to know her.
MacDara O Conaola
March 4, 2025
It was a privilege and a pleasure to have known Vicki. She was good-natured, non-judgemental, and had a wonderful sense of humour. It was always a joy to meet her with Colm, and with Ann and Molly, on their many trips to Ireland. Slán go fóill Vicki!
MacDara, Anna, Seán, agus Michelle
Maureen Scherphorn
March 3, 2025
Vicki was a gracious, intelligent, beautiful and humorous woman. She also had the patience of a saint. I first met Vicki when my sisters and I traveled to Ireland for a vacation with her and (cousin)Colm.
She was welcoming, amusing and so interesting.
We talked about old computer games and made silly jokes as we took turns sharing the backseat hump on our road trips. (So much patience).
Vicki and Colm made a short visit to my sister Cathy and Bruce´s place in north Michigan ( where Vicki swam out in Lake Superior) and visited some local sites with various of my siblings.
She will be remembered there on beach days when we swim in the same waters she enjoyed, on campfire nights when the stars are bright and deck parties like those she shared with us.
To Colm, and to your loving daughters and all family, friends and coworkers, I am so sorry for your loss.
Maureen (Moe) Scherphorn
Begnoche Christine
March 3, 2025
What a fun, interesting, kind person. Vicki was our hostess on an awesome trip round about in Ireland. I´m so sad that she passed so young, but I know she lived life to the fullest. Condolences to Colm and to their daughters
Priscilla Madigan
March 3, 2025
This picture of Vicki perfectly exemplifies who she was. Lovely, warm, kind, enthusiastic and a bit impish. She and her lovely family were brave warriors in her final journey. It was filled with a lot of living... just like their lives had always been. Her loss feels deep. My heart is full of Vicki and her family.
Carl Murray
March 3, 2025
I first met Vicki when she was a graduate student at Cornell. She was a remarkable person - a free spirit who enriched the lives of so many people with her kindness and generosity. Irreplaceable.
Kevin Hutchinson
March 3, 2025
My deepest condolences to Colm, Ann and Molly.
Vicki was a truly wonderful person and I am very grateful for time spent with her. I will remember always her passion for all aspects of life and for her (in my experience) invariable good humour and grace.
Mohammed Tesemma
March 2, 2025
My heart goes out to the family for the loss of our friend and colleague Vicki Powers. She was so kind to me and my family that I am eternally grateful to know her and her family. Rest in peace.
Niall McGuinness
March 2, 2025
I can date the first time I met Vicky - 22nd August 1984, at Connolly Station, Dublin, when I arrived from Belfast, where I was working at the time. Colm and Vicky were visiting Ireland for the first time as a couple, and we spent the next few days at the wedding of some mutual friends, eating Indian food, and going to pubs. We all got to dance with Vicky at the friends' wedding, and someone took a photo (sadly, I no longer have it) of me and her grinning at the camera, thoroughly enjoying the moment. It is how I will member her - her zest for life, her enjoyment of all she saw and experienced on that first trip to Ireland, and how much she was a soul mate to Colm. She became part of our lives that August, our tight little group of friends, and she fitted in so naturally it was almost as if we had known her forever. I have kept a diary for over 50 years, and it brings alive the memory of one taken from us too soon. Rest in peace, Vicky
Doug Pike
March 2, 2025
We of the Pike clan greatly mourn the loss suffered by the Powers/Mulcahy clan. We all are honored to have known Vicki, cooked with Vicki, traveled with Vicki, become close to the people who Vicki has known and influenced, and . . . the list goes on. She was able to balance her passion with even-handedness and would do anything for anyone. Her deep reservoir of happiness and optimism never came close to running dry and raised all of our ships. Colm, Ann, and Molly - as we hope you know - we are here for you. We will carry her memory as a blessing.
Kevin Madigan
March 2, 2025
There are are many things I loved about Vicky, among them her humor, her political passion, her dancing and singing, her stellar hostess skills as well as her cooking (which, oddly, she occasionally had doubts about), and her ability to talk about anything and everything. She was much respected in her chosen field and was clearly proud of that, but made no big deal of it. Her decline over the past year was hard to witness, but it also was quite amazing to see her bravery under such circumstances. Vicki was one of a kind and is much missed.
Brian Sauvey
March 2, 2025
I am not accustomed to being at a loss for words, but I find it difficult to convey the depth of loss I feel. Vicki was one of those rare people who loved without judgement and enjoyed every day. I will remember the dinners, the spirited conversations around politics and feminism, her Pythonesque humor. Trying hard to look on the bright side of life.
Claire and Cormac
March 2, 2025
Remembering Vicki with great affection and expressing sadness for Colm, Ann and Molly to have lost such a vibrant companion and dear mother in the prime of her life.
Love from
Claire and Cormac (Belfast)
Professor Des MacHale, Cork, Ireland
March 2, 2025
Dear Colm and family,
We were shocked and deeply saddened to hear of the death of your beloved Vicki. May she rest in peace and rise in glory. You are all in our thoughts and prayers at this saddest of times. But Vicki will live on in her mathematical work, one of our few true sources of everlasting truth and immortality.
Joyce Fox
March 2, 2025
Vicki, we will miss your tremendous energy and enthusiasm. Joy personified .
I´m lucky to have met you
Paul Sato (Yamanouchi)
March 1, 2025
Dear Vicki,
This is not an easy note to write.
Be at peace, Vicki. I will remember you for that vital, and intelligent, person that you always were, the gracious half of the marriage of Vicki & Colm, and mother to two very impressive daughters whom I finally got to meet in person, and who did so much to help your husband lately.
It all happened too fast, but I´m glad for you that it was so at the end. I for one will treasure the memories of the trip all of us together down to visit Celia in County Wicklow, mindlessly hopping between stones near a waterfall on an river near her property, and marching with determination up the paths of the hollow, discussing ... whatever ! That is the memory I will keep in the forefront of my mind.
Thanks for being the anchor that you were for Colm. You were good for him, and he for you. It shows in your daughters, Ann and Molly. I know it´s obvious, but it was great to see a little shade of you, and a little shade of Colm, in both your daughters when I first met them as grown adults recently!
Your accomplishments as an academic, researcher, mentor, and administrator at Emory are really impressive - almost as impressive as your achievements as a mother to Ann and Molly and beloved wife to Colm. You are missed. Your loved ones will always keep you in their hearts. You should be proud of what they have become, and done together, for you and for each other. And I will treasure the minor contributions I made to some key moments in the many years you and Colm were together.
Farewell. Rest In Peace.
Barbara Nesin
March 1, 2025
I'll always remember twenty years of Vicki's welcoming friendship, sharing meals and politics, dancing in the living room and laughter. Thankful to have been in your "pod" during the pandemic, too. My heart hurts for the family. May her memory be a blessing.
Bruce Reznick
March 1, 2025
Words fail in the face of reality, but that is what I can offer. Vicki was my best friend in the mathematical world and a great professional collaborator. We always had a great time when we saw each other. I will think of her warmly and especially when I am at a conference and she is not there. (Who will I be able to talk to? Where the hell should I eat?) As will so many of her friends and collaborators, I miss Vicki and will think so fondly of her and of our times together.
Neil Calkin
March 1, 2025
I knew and liked Vicki very much, for about 30 years. I knew her first as a mathematician, and as Colm's partner in life, and as a friend. She had a generosity of spirit, a joy in life, and a wonderful sense of humour. May her memories live on for a very long time.
Catherine Smith
March 1, 2025
I met Vicki through my cousin Colm. They welcomed my 2 sisters and me on a road trip across Ireland. My sisters and I adopted Vicki as an honorary sister. She was smart, funny, independent and a lot of fun. She and Colm visited my husband and me at our cottage, where Vicki took up my challenge to swim with me in Lake Superior. My best memory is her emerging from the lake, grinning through sparkling water and sun. I will miss her, as the whole family will.
Debra MacLaughlan-Dumes
March 1, 2025
Vicki and Colm came to visit me when I was a grad student at the University of Chicago. It was the first time I met them. I remember her vivacious personality and encouraging presence, her gusto for delectable cuisine, her passion for mathematics, her devotion to family. I will miss her more than I can say. My condolences to her loved ones.
Ha Nguyen
February 21, 2025
Vicki, I'll never forget how you'd light up saying "You should try this!" - whether it was a new math result or discovering delicious food together from Atlanta to France to Germany. Your enthusiasm made complex math feel approachable and turned every conference trip into a culinary adventure. You welcomed me into your home as a grad student, shared your love of international cooking, and showed me that being a brilliant mathematician doesn't mean giving up life's other joys. Your warmth, courage, and generous spirit will forever inspire me. Thank you for being the most amazing academic mother I could have wished for. My heart goes out to Colm, Ann, and Molly. You shared Vicki's extraordinary love and kindness with so many of us, and I'm deeply grateful for all the times you welcomed me into your family's life.
Celia
February 12, 2025
What a remarkable person Vicki was.
I am so sorry for your loss. Much love, Celia
Robert Powers
February 11, 2025
Vicki had an irrepressible sense of humor. At a gathering of friends and relatives shortly before her passing, she displayed how even the prospect of near death could not change her sunny character. Sadness was not a very lasting part of her. I gave her a printout of a joke from an anonymous source on the internet: a story about a couple bringing Frosty the Snowman into their living room. (They were angry that he left without saying goodbye. Of course, he actually melted without saying goodbye.) She responded with side-splitting laughter. That´s how I will always remember her: not as someone who could laugh at death, but as someone who could laugh in spite of death.
Donal Costigan
February 9, 2025
Fran and I send our deepest sympathy to Colm and his family. Vicky had a ready smile and enthusiasm, was always upbeat and was a hugely respected mentor and teacher in Emory Math Department. She was a great mother to her girls and a perfect foil to her talented husband. She bore her illness with fortitude and we were so pleased to have a chance to see her one last time during our visit to Atlanta in November. Colm and the family were so caring for her during the relentless progression of ALS. I know that she and the family were very grateful to the neurology and multidisciplinary team at Emory Clinic. Let us hope that some day we may learn how to arrest if not reverse this disease, which has claimed such a special and gifted individual. Donal and Frances Costigan, Dublin, Ireland
Joyce
February 9, 2025
I invited Vicki over after school about 55 years ago when she was the new girl in class. She was a breath of fresh air and my lifelong friend through good & bad times. She shared her favorite books, recipes and cooking, music and her daughters. She will be part of my life as long as I live.
Eoin Nolan
February 9, 2025
Among my first memories of Vicki was Circa 87/88 we were playing Genus edition of Trivial Pursuit while Colm and Vicki were visiting Cork in Ireland, anytime it was Vickis turn to play funnily enough it was the end of everbody elses endevour, as every question was quickly answered in haste and the pie filled...it was hilarious, always happy and smiling. Ave atque vale Vicki
Showing 1 - 51 of 51 results
Please consider a donation as requested by the family.
Funeral services provided by:
A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home & Crematory2773 North Decatur Road P.O. Box 4000, Decatur, GA 30031
The nightly ceremony in Washington, D.C. will be dedicated in honor of your loved one on the day of your choosing.
Read moreWhat kind of arrangement is appropriate, where should you send it, and when should you send an alternative?
Read moreWe'll help you find the right words to comfort your family member or loved one during this difficult time.
Read moreIf you’re in charge of handling the affairs for a recently deceased loved one, this guide offers a helpful checklist.
Read moreLegacy's Linnea Crowther discusses how families talk about causes of death in the obituaries they write.
Read moreThey're not a map to follow, but simply a description of what people commonly feel.
Read moreYou may find these well-written obituary examples helpful as you write about your own family.
Read moreThese free blank templates make writing an obituary faster and easier.
Read moreSome basic help and starters when you have to write a tribute to someone you love.
Read moreSponsored