Jeremy
Jeremy Eller
d. November 6, 2019
Jeremy Eller, age 18, died on Nov. 6, 2019, from injuries related to being struck by a car in the Atlas Mountains while with the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Abroad Program in Rabat, Morocco.
He died while with friends who loved him on a grand adventure that made him happy. His family’s only regrets are that it happened so painfully early and that they didn't get to say goodbye.
He was a West Chester resident, a 2019 graduate of Cincinnati Country Day School, and he attended Leaves of Learning and Ayer Elementary School during his too-short life. He would have attended Ohio State University in the fall of 2020 and majored in computer science.
He loved playing guitar and singing. While in Morocco, just days before his death, he sang in public for only the second time at an open-mike night in a Moroccan café he frequented.
He sketched and drew. He had focused for a long time on learning to draw skulls because faces were still too hard for him, and understanding the structure of the skull helped him to draw faces. He had begun to work on drawing hands, too, and his notebooks are full of doodles of hands drawn when he was supposed to be listening in class.
He believed there weren’t enough women in coding, and he thought that was a terrible waste of talent, and so he tried to persuade young women he thought would enjoy coding to major in computer science. As you might expect, results were mixed.
While in Morocco, he started growing a scruffy beard, and his parents suspect that it was because bearded men were perceived by Moroccan men as more protective of the young women they were with. The other participants in the program, Jeremy’s friends, were all young women. He did all that he could to protect them from harassment on the streets. Jeremy would deny that there was any purpose for the beard. In fact, he’d probably say he was just too lazy to shave—which might be true, too!—but he went out of his way to keep his friends safe, and even more so, to make sure they felt safe. A beard that he grew for them would be just his style.
His trip to Morocco was his second time to live abroad. He was an exchange student on an immersion program with En Famille International when he was 12 years old. He lived with a German family for six months in Würtzburg, Germany, and the experience changed him forever. He said that once he had managed a foreign country where he didn’t yet speak the language without anyone around that he knew, he felt he could handle whatever life threw at him. He wasn’t afraid of anything.
He was strong and brilliant and creative and living his best life. His loss is truly tragic.
He is survived by his parents James and Kriston Eller, his brother Kyle Eller, his grandparents Pat and Morris Sites and D.J. Eller, aunts and uncles David and Jodi Eller and Carianne Sites Fisher and Derek Fisher, and cousins Erika and Alison Eller.
Services will be at Hodapp Funeral Home in Liberty Twp. Visitation will be Friday, Nov. 22 from 3-7 p.m. The funeral will be held on Saturday, Nov. 23 at 1 p.m.
In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the Jeremy Eller Memorial Fund for International Study held at the Community Foundation of West Chester/Liberty here: www.wclfoundation.org/donate?
He died while with friends who loved him on a grand adventure that made him happy. His family’s only regrets are that it happened so painfully early and that they didn't get to say goodbye.
He was a West Chester resident, a 2019 graduate of Cincinnati Country Day School, and he attended Leaves of Learning and Ayer Elementary School during his too-short life. He would have attended Ohio State University in the fall of 2020 and majored in computer science.
He loved playing guitar and singing. While in Morocco, just days before his death, he sang in public for only the second time at an open-mike night in a Moroccan café he frequented.
He sketched and drew. He had focused for a long time on learning to draw skulls because faces were still too hard for him, and understanding the structure of the skull helped him to draw faces. He had begun to work on drawing hands, too, and his notebooks are full of doodles of hands drawn when he was supposed to be listening in class.
He believed there weren’t enough women in coding, and he thought that was a terrible waste of talent, and so he tried to persuade young women he thought would enjoy coding to major in computer science. As you might expect, results were mixed.
While in Morocco, he started growing a scruffy beard, and his parents suspect that it was because bearded men were perceived by Moroccan men as more protective of the young women they were with. The other participants in the program, Jeremy’s friends, were all young women. He did all that he could to protect them from harassment on the streets. Jeremy would deny that there was any purpose for the beard. In fact, he’d probably say he was just too lazy to shave—which might be true, too!—but he went out of his way to keep his friends safe, and even more so, to make sure they felt safe. A beard that he grew for them would be just his style.
His trip to Morocco was his second time to live abroad. He was an exchange student on an immersion program with En Famille International when he was 12 years old. He lived with a German family for six months in Würtzburg, Germany, and the experience changed him forever. He said that once he had managed a foreign country where he didn’t yet speak the language without anyone around that he knew, he felt he could handle whatever life threw at him. He wasn’t afraid of anything.
He was strong and brilliant and creative and living his best life. His loss is truly tragic.
He is survived by his parents James and Kriston Eller, his brother Kyle Eller, his grandparents Pat and Morris Sites and D.J. Eller, aunts and uncles David and Jodi Eller and Carianne Sites Fisher and Derek Fisher, and cousins Erika and Alison Eller.
Services will be at Hodapp Funeral Home in Liberty Twp. Visitation will be Friday, Nov. 22 from 3-7 p.m. The funeral will be held on Saturday, Nov. 23 at 1 p.m.
In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the Jeremy Eller Memorial Fund for International Study held at the Community Foundation of West Chester/Liberty here: www.wclfoundation.org/donate?
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