Our beautiful girl

FORT WORTH – Michelle Elise Koch passed away Thursday, Sept. 7, 2017 in Bryan, Texas. Michelle was 26.

Memorial Service: A celebration of her life will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday in the Marty Leonard Community Chapel, 3131 Sanguinet Street. Family and friends will gather from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday in the Great Room at Robertson Mueller Harper, 1508 Eighth Avenue.

Memorials: Green Oaks School in Arlington, Texas

Born in Fort Worth on Aug. 16, 1991, Michelle was the beloved daughter of Paul and Teresa Hamilton Koch. She attended Daggett Montessori Elementary and Junior High schools before graduating from R. L. Paschal High School in 2009. She attended Texas A&M University, majoring in Zoology. She hoped to become a Herpetologist.

Michelle was always the imp. When it came to all of God’s creatures, she was a softie for almost all of them. When she was 5 or 6, she saw an episode of “Animal Hospital” and told her family that she had to “give a tear” when she saw a puppy with a fish hook caught in its throat.

Most kids have puppies or kittens – Michelle was into all kinds of creepy, crawly, slimy things. While her sisters played with dolls and tea sets, Michelle was always outside looking for critters.

Michelle had a passion for lizards and snakes, and her knowledge of both was amazing – if anyone found one that they didn’t recognize, they would take it to Michelle, and she could almost always identify it. If she didn’t know what it was, she would take a picture of it and search her books and the internet until she found out what it was.

In her spare time, Michelle’s hobby was drawing. Her talent for drawing first revealed itself in the fourth grade when she drew a large segmented dragon for her class’s end-of-year program. As the years went on, she continued to draw, as well as to fashion elaborate creatures out of duct tape. In high school and beyond, she astounded everyone with her talent for intricate pointillist drawings made entirely out of dots on a page.

Over the years, Michelle grew from a little girl into a confident woman who was working hard to find her way in the world. She was a truly remarkable young woman who wasn’t afraid to stand for the courage of her convictions, even when faced with overwhelming opposition.

Michelle was loved by everyone who knew her. She had a gentle soul, and she cared for everyone she met. Her capacity for compassion was overwhelming. In her short time here on Earth, she touched innumerable lives, and she went on touching lives after her death through the donation of her tissues.

Her death leaves a huge void in our lives which can never be filled. We will miss her so very much, but we take solace in knowing that a part of her lives on not only in the lives of those who will receive her tissues, but also in the memories of all those whose lives she touched in even the tiniest of ways.

Survivors: In addition to her parents, Michelle is survived by her older sister, Rachel Koch Syska and her husband, Matt, of San Francisco, Calif., and her younger sisters Sarah Koch and Rebecca Koch, both of Fort Worth; grandparents, Mary Gazaway Koch of Brackettville and Lowell and Dorothy Carroll Hamilton of Brevard, N.C.; and numerous aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.