Eva Ruth (Day) Wulff’s mortal journey ended Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024, in her home in Eatonville, Wash., attended by her husband and children.
She was born March 12, 1967, to Terence Lee and Norma Ruth Day in Kennewick, the fourth of six children.
The family moved to Pullman in 1972. In 1985, Eva graduated from Pullman High School and she earned a bachelor’s degree from Washington State University in 1989, with a double major in English and French. In 2000, she received a master’s degree in speech and language pathology from George Washington University.
Eva lived an adventurous life full of love and service.
She left for the Peace Corps two weeks after graduation from WSU where the official language was French, and she also learned the local language of Hausa. In Niger, West Africa, she served a women’s nutrition assignment; teaching local women clean health, nutrition, and how to rehydrate their children and prevent malnutrition with local elements. She also conducted monthly weight checks for children to ensure that they stayed healthy.
That service was cut short by serious dysentery.
Eva was visiting in Berlin in 1989 where she watched people using sledge hammers and picks to smash holes in the Berlin Wall as it was coming down. She even talked to an East German soldier through a hole in the wall on New Year’s Eve.
Eva worked as a legal secretary in Washington, D.C., for four years after which she taught English as a WorldTeach volunteer in Namibia, Africa, in 1995-96.
There, she worked with native Catholic women who taught English to earn money in their home villages. and she monitored English teaching in villages to determine progress and provide further teaching skills.
She also created a library at the Cheshire Home, a home for disabled children, which provided physical therapy, including a swimming pool where Eva taught swimming, even successfully teaching a quadriplegic boy how to swim. In high school and college, she had been a lifeguard.
As Eva pursued her professional life, she worked various jobs in D.C., in private and public schools, until returning to Washington state in 2005 where she worked in Federal Way public schools.
Eva met Del Wulff in 2008 and they married Aug. 6, 2010, in McCall.
She was an ardent athlete. Growing up, she enjoyed swimming all summer with her family, both at the pool and in the free-flowing Snake River at Buffalo Eddy where she developed a love for open-water swimming. She also enjoyed running white water rapids with her family.
In 1992-2012 Eva ran marathons, triathlons and open water competitions, including providing kayak support for a swim race on the Puget Sound.
Eva developed an early love for music (singing and playing the piano), reading, writing and publishing several poems in literary magazines.
Hers was a lifelong love of dogs. She enjoyed training for competition in shows and nose work, and her dogs earned many ribbons. Eva enjoyed hiking with her dog Pongo in the Pacific Northwest. They summited many mountains, including Mount Si, near North Bend, Wash.
She died after an incredible eight-year battle with breast cancer, which was first diagnosed in August 2016 as stage IV metastatic breast cancer. That November, she was forced to take medical retirement.
Ever determined, Eva’s goal was to see her daughter Ashley receive her bachelor’s degree from WSU in 2020, and son Kevin’s graduation from high school in 2022.
Eva was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was deeply respected and loved. Many of her family traveled to Eatonville for final visits as her health declined.
Her parents express profound gratitude to her extraordinarily amazing husband for his remarkable, devoted and loving care of Eva, and to hospice caregivers who helped make it possible for her to die in her home.
Eva is survived by her husband, Del Wulff, of Eatonville, and children Ashley and Kevin, of Lynnwood, Wash.; parents: Terence L. Day and Ruth Day, of Pullman; siblings: Daniel (Evelyn) Day, of Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic; Samuel and Jane Day, of West Seattle; Benjamin and Staci Day, of Pullman; Elisabeth and Mark Henry, of Cheney, Wash.; and, Nathan and Monika Day, of Magna, Utah; 20 nieces and nephews; and 10 grandnieces and grandnephews.
A memorial service will be held at a later date.
