In loving memory - obit art

June 10, 1950 – July 23, 2020

Beth Heriza was born in Baker, Oregon, to Mary and Louis Heriza, the eighth of their nine children. She attended St. Francis Academy, where she developed an abiding interest in music and math. An accomplished pianist, she continued playing and learning throughout her life. She also played the viola, most recently in a viola-cello-piano trio with her sisters Clare and Celeste. In retirement, she studied calculus. For fun!

She earned an MD from Oregon Health Sciences University and completed her residency in pediatrics at UC Irvine. As a physician, she worked in chronically underserved communities — in migrant clinics in Fresno, California, and Walla Walla, Washington, and on the Navajo and Cherokee reservations.

From her father she inherited a love of small-scale farming and a longing for self-sufficiency. She left medicine to study horticulture at Clackamas Community College and the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. She oversaw production in commercial greenhouses in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and later was the market manager of the Hollywood Farmers Market in Portland. She and her partner Sarah created Hozhoni Herbs — growing and selling plants at farmers markets in the Portland metropolitan area.

Beth studied Spanish in the U.S. and in Zacatecas, Mexico, and Antigua, Guatemala, developing enduring friendships with her instructors, Arturo Dorado Jr. and Aura Rufina Espana Sinay.

She loved biking, walking and college basketball. In 2016, Beth and her sister Mary K. walked the 500-mile Camino de Santiago and, in 2019, she watched every March Madness game with her brother John, fulfilling two longtime dreams.

Beth was independent, endlessly curious, very funny, so smart, without vanity, disciplined, deeply reserved and immensely kind.

She died at home two months after being diagnosed with an untreatable cancer, cared for by Sarah Laughlin, her partner of more than 30 years. Sarah and three of Beth’s sisters were with her when she died.

She leaves behind Sarah and seven siblings: John Heriza and wife Elizabeth, Celeste O’Dell, Alice Ierulli, Robert Heriza and wife Judy Brookhart, Mary K. Eilers, Clare Heriza, and Tony Heriza and wife Jane Golden. She is also survived by her uncle, Richard Sheehy, many cousins, nieces and nephews, grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and innumerable friends and colleagues. Preceding her in death were her parents and an infant brother, Edward.

A memorial for Beth will be held when large gatherings are again possible, and her ashes will be scattered in the Elkhorn Mountains near Baker City. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to Ethos, a Portland nonprofit that provides children with music instruction and access to instruments.