Remembering Emily
You and Your Mental Health: A Friendship to the End
This fund was established in memory of Emily McCord by her friend, Amanda. Emily and Amanda were roommates and part of the class of 2003 while attending the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA). After facing mental health challenges for many years, Emily took her own life in the fall of 2022.
Below, you will find Amanda's reflection on Emily, and the bright, fun, athletic, and deeply caring person she was. You'll also learn the background of the name of this fund, inspired by Emily's own creative spirit. The goal of this fund is to support mental health services for IMSA students, and to help ensure that students like Emily find help to overcome their own challenges. Every gift to this fund will ensure IMSA can provide these direct services for their students, forever.
- In Memory of Emily McCord -
Written by her IMSA roommate, Amanda Murphyao. Originally posted on Amanda's blog on October 17, 2022.
We met at that weekend in the summer where you see what it’s like to sleep over at IMSA and they tell you not to choose your roommate based on your experience that one weekend, but we hung out so much sophomore year that everyone thought we were roommates anyway. We got in trouble (to the surprise of no one) and she had to make a poster for 1503 (even though she technically lived in 1502 at the time, she exclusively watched TV in our wing during study hours). The resulting Study Skillz bulletin board, co-created by Isabel, was a glitter-tastic work of art. “You and Study Hours: A Friendship to the End” remained up for many years (perhaps more out of inertia than any real respect for their bedazzled efforts).
She was an easy person to like. She was fun and sporty (#34) – playing lacrosse and soccer and golf and bowling – and a great roommate – early to bed, early to rise, kind, organized, and tidy AF! Our room won prizes for being “The Most Decorated” (or possibly “The Biggest Fire Hazard”) with all the art and maps and posters and décor hanging from the walls and ceilings – and the repurposed Twister game shower curtain used to hide people in our bathroom. (Sorry again, Jessica!) We used our first floor window to move in and to move out and to yell greetings at people across the quad. We had art from friends and stolen street signs and maybe an illegal pet hamster that only got out the one time. (Thanks for the rescue mission, Sarah!)
Once for a group project we drew a giant poster illustrating The Odyssey and only realized at the end that we had misspelled the title. She added the “e” and told our teacher it was a revisionist pastiche. She was a “Classy Lassy” for another group project that had something to do with Hamlet. We liberated a stuffed Aflac duck from Dr. Chott’s office and made a series of ransom videos with a video camera that we rented from the IRC. We tried fencing with equipment that we liberated from the east gym. Denise was there, too! She liberated IMSA swag from various offices and gifted the items to Lana and other friends. She did laundry in the soccer locker room with Stephanie (and possibly liberated some wardrobe items). For a project in Astronomy class, instead of doing any research on Stonehenge, we went to Eagle and got ingredients for lemon poppy seed muffins, which we must have somehow made in the microwave, and then during our presentation Emily spoke extensively on the Mayan calendar based on her memory of a movie she saw once in the fifth grade. She earned us an A+. She was involved in a taco eating contest in Arbor with Kitty. Outcome debatable.
Well after our time at IMSA, we met up with a group of alumni at a restaurant in Seattle. I was the only one with a child then, so I did the thing that moms do where they take the little one away from the table as soon as they lose interest in being seated (but well before getting to eat any dinner or talk to any other adults). She came with us and got a bouncy ball from the vending machine to play with the kid so I could grab a bite to eat and chat with our friends. She was like that.
She taught me about music and that there is more than one way to skin a cat (#TeamUrbanski). She introduced me to the slightly strange joys of suburban sleepovers and aimlessly driving around.
She was fun, she was funny, she was selfless. She was a light in the world even though she was hurting, and now she is gone.
She is almost certainly a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic that took her livelihood. She is definitely a casualty of the terrible mental health pandemic that has taken so many. I know that members of the IMSA community have reached out to her over the years and especially in what turned out to be her final, very difficult, year. Thank you all for being a friend to someone who was such a good friend to me.