Bernice Daniels

Bernice Viola Emerich Daniels died peacefully in hospice on May 11, 2023 at the age of 90. She was born in Racine, WI to Alexander Albert and Ida Elizabeth (Wilke) Emerich on Dec. 27, 1932 and raised on the family farm surrounded by a large and loving family. The youngest of 16 half siblings, she was the last remaining member of the generation that grew up in the Great Depression and World War II.

Bernice was a good student at Horlick High School in Racine, and became the first in her family to go to college, earning a Bachelor’s degree in History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

She went on to earn a Master’s in Library Science. She began her career as a librarian driving a Bookmobile in Rapid City, SD, then working for the Ohio State University Libraries, and ultimately directing the Worthington (Ohio) Public Library for 25 years, retiring in 1992.

Bernice married Kermit Cudd in 1954 and they had three children, Tim Cudd, Ann Cudd, and Ben Cudd. Kermit and Bernice divorced in 1970 and she married Edward Daniels, who predeceased her in 2010. Bernice and Ed shared a love of horses and fox hunting, and owned a horse farm for many years in Gambier, OH where they taught riding and coached the Kenyon College Equestrian team.

After Bernice retired, she and Ed traveled extensively throughout the world, and later Bernice took trips to Canada, France, China, Taiwan, and South Africa, accompanying Ann on philosophy junkets. Bernice and Ed sold the farm in 1996 and moved to Lawrence, KS to live near Ann, and help raise her grandsons Alex and Thomas. In Lawrence she did volunteer work for Headquarters, Inc. and later for Lawrence Memorial Hospital and the Lawrence Community Theater. She was an active horsewoman into her late 70’s and a longtime member of the Sunday Mad Dogs running and walking group. Bernice lived in the Brandon Woods senior living community in Lawrence in her later years and moved to Morningstar of Arvada, CO near the end of her life, where Ben and his wife, Lynn, helped to care for her.

Tragically, oldest son Tim died in 2013. Bernice is survived by her children Ann (Neal Becker) and Ben (Lynn McCarty), daughter-in-law Evelyn Cudd, and grandchildren Alex (Sao Bac) and Thomas Becker, Mikhail (Ceesay) Morriss, and Kathleen Baumstein (Avi), and four great-grandchildren.