Lois Kathleen Eppich, 56, of Seneca, KS, succumbed to cancer on Friday morning, February 27, 2009 at Life Care Center in Seneca.

Lois was born on June 22, 1952, the daughter of Edward and Althea Chase Brandstetter, in Morristown, NJ. Lois graduated from Morris Regional High School in 1970. She attended Morris County Community College before transferring to Fort Hays State University in Hays, KS, where she graduated in December, 1974, with a BS in Elementary Education. While attending Fort Hays she met her future husband. She married John Eppich on December 27, 1975 at St. Jude Church in Budd Lake, NJ.

From 1974 to 1988 while raising her children Katherine and Johnny, she taught in the school districts of Goodland, KS, Amoret, MO, and Cunningham, KS. She also substituted in Mullinville and Greensburg school districts. Most importantly careerwise, in 1980 she returned to school and began her love affair with teaching science. She would eventually receive a Masters degree in Earth Science from Mississippi State University in 2003.

She began teaching at Sts. Peter & Paul School in 1988. While at Sts. Peter and Paul, she was the Kansas Soil Conservation District’s Teacher of the Year in 2006 and the Kansas Geological Foundation’s Outstanding Earth Science Teacher of the Year for 2007.

She attended numerous government-sponsored workshops, including programs at the Ames Research Center in California, at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, at the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute of Astrophysics in Massachusetts, a chemistry program in Colorado, an Oregon workshop in teaching middle-school science, and a study-at-sea program with the U.S. Navy on board the USS Pathfinder.

She was a member of Sts. Peter & Paul Catholic Church, the Seneca Square Dance Club, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the Kansas Earth Science Teachers Association (KESTA), the Delta Kappa Gamma Society of women educators, the Kansas Association of Teachers of Science (KATS), and the Kansas & Missouri Paleontological Society. She also volunteered in the fossil prep lab at Kansas State University’s Natural History Museum.

Lois loved to explore. She and her husband spent their summers traveling and camping. They visited every US state except Alaska, and traveled to six Canadian provinces, New Zealand, Australia, and Europe. While traveling Lois would collect rocks, minerals and fossils, which she would later share with her students and youth organizations.

She is survived by her husband John of the home; her daughter, Katherine Moore of Wichita; her son, Johnny Eppich of Pawnee City, NE; a sister, Susan Hurly of New Jersey; and a brother, David Brandstetter of North Carolina. Johnny and Serena Macasio are expecting Lois’s first grandchild in August.

She was preceded in death by her parents and her brother Michael Brandstetter.

A rosary will be prayed at 10 AM Wednesday, March 4, at Sts. Peter & Paul Church in Seneca, KS, with Mass of Christian Burial following at 11 AM. Inurnment will be in New Jersey at a later date.

Memorials may be left in Lois’s memory to Sts. Peter & Paul School or www.caringbridge.org