Sadly, Emily Couric did not live to see a final season of life; her hair never turned gray and her figure never went slack, After a gallant 15 month battle against pancreatic cancer, she died at age 54 on October 18, 2001. A Democrat, she was the first woman state senator from central Virginia. Had she lived, she was deemed almost certainly to become Virginia's first woman lieutenant governor, and—perhaps ultimately—the Old Dominion's first woman governor. But in her relatively short life, she achieved more than most achieve in a full lifetime. A mother, author, civic leader, and devoted wife of Dr. George Beller, chairman of the department of cardiology at the University of Virginia Medical Center, she was, as a long-time friend observed at the time of her death, "a true profile in courage."
