October 3, 1967 - August 15, 2024
Sacha E. Kopp, 56, of Spokane, Washington, died suddenly at home on Thursday, August 15, 2024.
Sacha E. Kopp passed into the mystery of God’s eternal love on Thursday, August 15, 2024. Taken by a sudden cardiac event, he was held by his wife, attended by gifted paramedics, and carried onward by the voices of his beloved children.
Sacha was born into the extraordinary love and care of Anita Rolaz on October 3, 1967 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Jay P. Kopp — a Loras College physics professor — entered their lives when Sacha was two years old, while Jay was on sabbatical in Zurich. He and Anita married and moved across the pond to Dubuque, Iowa. And so began a family that reared Sacha around a table filled often with neighbors, friends, colleagues, conversation, occasional costumes, great laughter, much love, affordable wine, good cheese, good bread, and the most sublime meals, compliments of Anita’s culinary arts.
Sacha attended Nativity grade school and Dubuque Wahlert High School and took classes at Loras College during his Wahlert years. He managed to graduate high school, a feat nearly imperiled by avoiding Physical Education until the bitter end. He read voraciously, took French lessons reluctantly, sketched effortlessly, and played trumpet loudly and in the wee hours, a choice not unnoticed by neighbors. He was baptized in a Catholic parish and served as an altar boy for Church of the Nativity and for the Sisters of the Visitation — communities whose prayers joined those of his godparents and flanked Sacha for decades thereafter. When Jay and Anita’s spousal partnership ended after Sacha’s departure for college, their family expanded to include Anita’s partner Rosemarie Bucher and Jay’s wife Jane Giellis.
Over eleven years in Chicago, Sacha earned an A.B., S.M. and Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Chicago. In the first of those years, a most loyal and lasting friendship began between Sacha and Simon Allentuch — a friendship lived out mostly through leisurely weekend phone conversations, deconstructing the world’s woes, debating issues and savoring music, film and reading recommendations. The friendship sustained them both through every season of life.
Amid a famed Chicago ice storm in 1992, Sacha met Gretchen Olson while answering phones for the WBEZ public radio fundraiser. And so began a great love. They married in the snow and bitter cold of November 12, 1995 in Syracuse, New York. Their fortunes in love were great. Their timing for weather, not so much. During their fifteen years in Austin, Texas, they welcomed two precious children — Eleanor and Elias. Sacha loved them fiercely through humor and hugs, games and guidance, movies and moral support, patience and prayers. He was so proud of them and loved showering generosity upon them. His greatest aspiration was to live a life of integrity, humility, and service that would inspire their own.
His professional calling in higher education took the family across the country — five years as a post-doc and visiting assistant professor at Syracuse University; nearly fifteen years at the University of Texas at Austin as a professor of physics, associate chair for undergraduate affairs in the physics department, and later as Associate Dean of the College of Natural Sciences; nearly five years at Stony Brook University (Stony Brook, NY) most as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; three years at the University of Nebraska at Omaha as Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and two years at Gonzaga University (Spokane, WA) as Provost and then Professor.
Wherever Sacha’s family went, a faith community became family. He cherished these close relationships from First English Lutheran Churches (Syracuse and Austin), Setauket Presbyterian (Setauket NY), The Urban Abbey and Kountze Memorial Lutheran (Omaha), and Salem Lutheran and St. Mark’s Lutheran (Spokane). He is indebted to these communities for the love with which they held him and sustained his family.
His impact as a physics professor, an elementary particle physicist, and a higher ed administrator are extensive and are best pondered with your favorite beverage while reading his LinkedIn page. Yes, he served on collaborations that both discovered the top quark and confirmed that neutrinos have mass; he led lobbying efforts to fund basic research, authored articles and text books, and launched and stewarded countless strategic plans, creative partnerships, institutes and degree programs, always sensing an opportunity or need and meeting it with collaboration and courage. But in his heart, Sacha was an an advocate of the liberal arts who believed every student should have real opportunity to grow as a scholar and a person into the fullness of their purpose. He saw capacities in institutions and people which at times they may not have seen in themselves and relished the role of mentor. In the end, he gave all he had to remove barriers and support the flourishing of the underdog, to foster a world in which what is right, good and true would triumph.
When not pouring himself into work with his formidable work ethic, he savored time with Gretchen and the kids, dove into a good presidential biography, cherished his LP collection, opted for simplicity and order when it came to possessions, and truly prized the chance to share a meal and conversation with family, friend or colleague. His family will remember him as selfless, self-deprecating, kind, generous, driven, artistic, steady, and giving…always giving, with his signature leavening humor at the ready and a current of mischief running just under the surface. He will be sorely missed on this earth.
Sacha was preceded in death by his dad Jay P. Kopp and his godparents, Tom and Theresa Auge. He is survived by his mother Anita and her partner Rosemarie Bucher, Jay’s wife Jane Giellis, Sacha’s spouse and soulmate Gretchen Olson Kopp, his precious children Eleanor Kopp (age 24) and Eli Kopp (age 20), and his dear friend Simon.
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Thursday, August 22, 2024 at 1 pm PT
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church
316 E 24th Ave
Spokane, WA
Livestream at https://www.youtube.com/@st.markslutheranspokane1542/streams. A reception will follow.
Sunday, September 1 at 3 pm CT
First English Lutheran Church
3001 Whitis Ave
Austin TX
Livestream at https://www.youtube.com/@firstenglishlutheranchurch3951/streams. A reception will follow.
A final memorial service will be held on Saturday, October 19, at 3pm, at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa.
Memorial donations can be made to the Sacha Kopp Academic Excellence Fund at Gonzaga University www.gonzaga.edu/kopp or to the public radio station of your choosing.
We welcome you to share memories or photos below. These will be a great consolation to his family, including their children, in the years to come.
