Annemarie Ard Koppisch

Annemarie Ard Koppisch, 87, mother of seven and avid Mets fan

Annemarie Ard Koppisch, the proud mother of seven children, passed away Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020, at the Princeton Care Center in Princeton, N.J. She was 87.

Born in Queens, N.Y., to John L. and Anne (Crowe) Ard on Aug. 2, 1932, she was the youngest of five and the only girl. She lived most of her life in New Jersey, growing up in Elizabeth, but moved with her husband, Dr. Arthur R. Koppisch, to Enid, Oklahoma, where he served in the Air Force in the mid-1950s, and to Silver Spring, Maryland, when he pursued his board certification  in psychiatry in the late 1960s. They were married for 60 years before he died in 2016.

Annemarie’s Catholic faith was a large part of her identity. She attended parochial schools in Elizabeth and was a 1949 graduate of St. Patrick’s High School, where she played for the girls basketball team, was a member of the cheerleading squad and sang in the choir. She also was a dedicated Girl Scout for much of her youth.

While raising her family, she attended several colleges in pursuit of an English degree, including the University of Maryland, Newark State Teachers College (now Kean University) and Trenton State (now the College of New Jersey). She hosted book club meetings in the early 1960s when the family lived in Roselle and remained an avid reader throughout her life.

Growing up with older brothers, she was a devoted New York Giants baseball fan—her favorite player was Whitey Lockman—and later switched her allegiance to the Mets. She rarely missed a game on television or radio. Her brothers–Jack, Jim, Bill and Ed Ard–predeceased her.

After high school she worked at an insurance company on Maiden Lane in Manhattan and at Merck & Co. in Rahway. Returning to New Jersey in 1969, the family lived in Murray Hill and she worked at the Oak Knoll School and Schlott Realtors in Summit. She retired in 1989 when she and Arthur moved to Kingston, where she became active in St. Paul Parish in Princeton. Volunteering through St. Paul’s, she worked at a Trenton food bank and visited home-bound seniors.  

She is survived by her sons, John (Maureen) of Hoboken, Mark (Leslie) of Bedminster, Peter (Linda) of Bedminster, Paul (Kyong Suk) of Gainesville, Va., Luke (Laura) of Mount Laurel, and David (Bridget) of Philadelphia. Her only daughter, Marianne Koppisch Tobler, died in 2018.

Annemarie is also survived by her sisters-in-law--Jean Koppisch Lutz, Joan Ard and Mary Ard-- and 11 grandchildren, whom Grandmom always remembered by two names: Sean Michael, Erik Jon, Jaclyn Brittany, Aaron Thomas, Stephen (Seth) Benjamin, Timothy Wing-kin, Julia Ching, Abigail Marie, Ingrid Rose and Daniel Joseph Koppisch and Alexandra Koppisch Tobler.

Visitation will be held at Higgins & Bonner Funeral Home, Westfield, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, March 3. A mass of Christian burial will be said on Wednesday, March 4 at 11 a.m. at the Church of St. Joseph the Carpenter, Roselle, where Annemarie was a parishioner for eight years. Burial will follow at Fairview Cemetery, Westfield. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to St. Joseph’s capital campaign https://stjosephsroselle.weshareonline.org/.

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