WORLD'S LEADING INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

Statement from Beth's Family

Elizabeth Anne Lochtefeld, our beloved daughter, sister, aunt, and friend, was suddenly and unexpectedly taken from us last Monday, October 25, at the age of 44.

Beth loved life, and lived it with curiosity, delight, and joy.  She graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in American Studies, an interdisciplinary major combining the arts, humanities, and social sciences.  Her post-graduate interests showed this same wide range, as well as her genuine love of learning: in her twenties she studied piano and became a gourmet cook, her passion for opera began in her thirties, and in recent years she took up Aikido, as a way to balance body, mind, and spirit.

Beth loved adventure.  She spent the year after college circumnavigating the globe teaching English in Japan, waiting tables at the Bull and Finch pub in Hong Kong, touring mainland China in the first wave of foreign visitors, and returning home via the Trans-Siberian Railway.  This odyssey proved merely her first infection by the travel bug, which continued throughout her life, whether touring paradors in Spain, attending opera in Santa Fe and Glimmerglass, witnessing the fall of the Berlin wall, or kayaking in Baja California.

But most of all, Beth loved people.  She was a dutiful daughter, a gracious sister, a doting aunt, and a caring friend, who loved intensely and without fear.  She never forgot a birthday.  She adored entertaining, and was equally adept at putting together an intimate dinner for a few friends, or choreographing a party for several hundred people. She cultivated and maintained a host of friendships drawn from all phases of her life, and was able to do this in such a way that all of these people knew they were special.

Combined with her intense work ethic, these interpersonal and organizational skills brought her considerable worldly success.  She founded the company that became Code NYC, an architectural expediting firm.  The firm's first location was her bedroom, and in its earliest days she would spread out her work on her bed, so that she would have to finish it before she could go to sleep.  Through her untiring efforts and assiduous client care, it grew into a multi-million dollar company.  Her material success allowed her to pursue other things she loved.  She sponsored a chair at the New York City Opera, served on the Board of the Nantucket Arts Council, and was involved with One World Arts and the Nantucket Wine Festival.

She is survived by her parents, John and Judy Lochtefeld, by her brothers Jim, Peter, and Tom, by her sister Catherine, by ten nieces and nephews, by extended family in Nantucket, Michigan, Colorado, and California, and by a host of friends in New York City, Nantucket, and throughout the world.