Laurie Elise Koch Van Fleet

The world has lost a lover of opera, gardens and Great Pyrenees, and grandchildren.Laurie Elise Koch Van Fleet died peacefully in her home in Montgomery County, Texas, on May 17, 2024, attended by family, and looking out on the lake she shared with egrets, herons, occasional ducks, and turtles.Laurie was born in Bastrop, Texas, on September 14, 1953. Her parents, Harris Moss Koch and Fanita Gurwitz Koch, owned the J Fox Department Store in Bastrop. Fanita was a recent immigrant from Mexico, and Laurie was forever proud of her Mexican heritage. She fondly recalled summers spent with her grandmother Katia Gurwitz in Mexico City. Laurie also remembered getting into trouble for helping struggling friends at Bastrop Elementary School, where speaking Spanish was forbidden.

She was confirmed in her Jewish faith at Temple Beth El in San Antonio, which she attended with her parents and grandparents Dorothy and Bob Koch.

In 1967, Laurie moved with her parents and younger sister Cindy to San Marcos, Texas. After school and on weekends and holidays, Laurie worked at The San Marcos Department Store, which her parents had bought.

Laurie was a 1972 honors graduate of San Marcos High School, where she was known for thespian skills she displayed in plays and speech and drama competitions.

She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in three years, majoring in Business Administration. She was elected to the Beta Gama Sigma business honor society.

After graduating from UT in 1975, Laurie married Allan Van Fleet, her duet acting partner at San Marcos High School. She moved to New York, where Allan was attending law school, and she worked in the Garment District for Montgomery Ward as a buyer and merchandizer of better women’s dresses.

Laurie and Allan returned to Texas in 1977. Laurie worked as a paralegal for the Butler Binion and Mayor Day & Caldwell law firms and NL Industries, before starting her own legal education at the University of Houston Law Center in 1981. She earned her Juris Doctor degree in 1984. One of her professors was Elizabeth Warren (now Senator Warren), from whom she learned bankruptcy law. Laurie joined Hughes, Watters & Askanase as a bankruptcy lawyer, working closely with David Askanase. Her clients included countless doctors and Rick’s Cabaret.

Laurie left the law to become a full-time, full-contact mother for daughter Katia Elaine, born in 1986. Laurie credits her first Great Pyrenees, Pena, with teaching Katia how to walk.

Laurie came out of retirement at Thanksgiving 1989, when she and Allan represented Central American refugees in political asylum hearings before U.S. Immigration Judges in Harlingen, Texas. They won all six of their cases, as Laurie recounted in “Two Weeks That Made a Difference,” published in the May 1990 issue of the Texas Bar Journal.

She returned to full-time parenting, and son Alexander Lawson arrived in September 1990, named for Laurie’s great-grandfather Rabbi Alexander Gurwitz.Laurie was active in the Houston community and served on the Board of the Houston Grand Opera. The granddaughter of renowned Ukrainian tenor Elias Gurwitz, Laurie was a huge fan of Luciano Pavarotti.She also had an outstanding eye for fine art and furnishings and became a docent at the Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens of the Fine Arts Museum Houston.

Although Laurie and Allan divorced in 2009, they became close friends again during Laurie’s last decade. They resumed attending the opera together, sometimes live productions at HGO, sometimes Metropolitan Opera cinema in the Woodlands.

A few years after the divorce, Laurie had moved to Huntsville, Texas, where she continued to garden, raise Great Pyrenees (she had ten over the years), and enjoy her grandsons, Lawson and Elias. And yes, they called her Mimi.

She found time to contribute to her new community and was a frequent lecturer at the Huntsville Historical Society. She enjoyed playing Mah Jong with the ladies at Elkins Lake, though she often complained of their cut-throat betting. (She was tickled that the ancient Chinese game was introduced to the United States in the early 1920s by her great-uncle Leo Gould.) Through their work at the Gibbs-Powell House, she met and became a close friend of Diane Linklater, mother of filmmaker Richard.

In May 2023, she left her Huntsville home and gardens and moved to Watermere at Woodland Lakes Senior Independent Living Community near Conroe.

Diabetes is a wicked disease that caused the early deaths of Laurie’s mother and younger sister. It plagued Laurie for most of her adult life. It fully caught up with her in 2024, and in May she began in-home hospice care provided by Katia and Alex, as well as hospice nurses. From the hospital bed set up in her living room, Laurie could look over her impressive art collection and the lake and woods outside.

Laurie slipped away just before dawn on May 17, 2024. Yes, Mimi dies, no matter how we wish for a different ending.

Laurie was preceded in death by her grandparents, Robert and Dorothy Koch of San Antonio, Texas, and Katia and Elias Gurwitz of Kharkiv, Ukraine and Mexico City, Mexico; her parents Harris and Fanita Koch and sister Cynthia Elaine of Bastrop, San Marcos, and San Antonio, Texas. She is survived by children Katia Elaine Van Fleet of Conroe, Texas and Alexander Van Fleet of Houston, Texas; and grandsons Lawson Allan Williams of Willis, Texas, and Elias Lee Daniel Hightower of Huntsville, Texas. Her former husband of 33 years and forever friend, Allan Van Fleet, lives in Galveston and Houston, Texas.

At Laurie’s request, a simple gravesite service will be held on Sunday, May 19, 2024, 2:00 pm at Beth El Memorial Park, 1715 Austin Hwy, San Antonio, TX 78218.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in Laurie’s name to the American Diabetes Association, P.O. Box 11454, Alexandria, VA 22312 www.diabetes.org/, National Great Pyrenees Rescue, Inc., P.O. Box 86, Nanuet, NY 10954 https://nationalpyr.org/; Special Pals Rescue Resource Center, 3830 Greenhouse RD, Houston, TX 77084 https://specialpals.org/, or a charity of your choice.

Most important, Laurie would want you to hug the ones you love and tell them you love them.