Emma Childers considered herself a "late-bloomer," and at six feet tall, little got in her way from doing the things she always dreamed of doing in her life. She became a public interest attorney, adventurer, and world-traveler. She especially loved riding horses and kayaking. She died on July 15, 2023, at the age of 87.

At age 49, she graduated from night school at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, CA with a JD degree. Emma then worked in Public Interest Law for the Friends Committee on Legislation of California as a lobbyist. She worked on various liberal issues, including low-income housing, abolition of the death penalty, and justice for juvenile offenders.

Emma said she was inspired to go into law after serving on a jury at age 26. She was stunned by how smart the attorneys were and was attracted to the grandeur of the court and how it all worked.

At age 30, Emma ran on an Amateur Athletic Union track team in Whittier, CA. Emma began running after reading Dr. Ken Cooper's book about aerobic exercise and corresponded with him. She is featured in a chapter about women running with their children in one of his books. She also ran four marathons. When Emma thought about going to law school, she said to herself, "If you can run the mile, you can go to law school. Your brain is much better than your legs."

Emma showed talents as an artist. She won art awards in first and seventh grades and won Honorable Mention in a Scholastic Art Competition for a water color in high school. After high school, she studied art at Phoenix College for two years. After her first year, she was chosen to design the cover of the college course catalogue. She then transferred to Sacramento State College, majoring in Political Science.

Emma said she always loved to travel. After her husband died, when she was 61, she had a three-month sabbatical from work and took a two-month trip on a Polish freighter ship as the only American passenger. Starting in Gdansk, Poland, the ship sailed in the North Sea, Baltic Sea, through the English Channel, through the Straits of Gibraltar, and into the Mediterranean Sea. She went to various ports, half in communist countries. The ports included in Denmark, Sweden, Bulgaria, Syria, Lebanon, and in the Greek Islands. She remembered how the captain let her go ashore in Beirut when Americans were nor allowed to travel there and how she could have been kidnapped and held hostage, but made it back to the ship safely.

After her freighter trip, Emma retired from her work as a public interest attorney. She said she was, "not married, on my own, with no one to stop me," and continued on her adventures and world travels.

One of Emma's dreams was to become bi-lingual. She wanted to live in a Spanish speaking country and become fluent in Spanish. After retirement, she moved to Antigua, Guatemala, where she lived for eight years in a house in the mountains that was built in 1560 and used to be nunnery.

While in Guatemala, Emma learned how to ride horses. She said she was always "crazy about horses." She grew up a couple blocks from a fairground in Phoenix and loved watching the rodeos and the horses in barns. As a child, she remembered sitting on a large tree limb and dreaming she was riding a horse. While she never owned her own horse, Emma went on horse riding trips in Western Ecuador, in the Andes, in Mexico, in Poland, and in Hawaii. She attended a horse-riding clinic in Wyoming.

Emma's adventures took her on mountain climbing trips to Mt. Kilimanjaro, in Africa (at age 64); to Nepal and Kathmandu; and to Ecuador, Chili, Argentina, Mexico, and Oregon. She backpacked all over California, and in Chili and Argentina.

When Emma was living in Guatemala, she also learned hot to kayak, and kayaking became a passion of hers. She remembered kayaking in the South Pacific in the Kingdom of Tonga, in Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, and California.

She also went on a woman's sailing journey in the South Pacific near the Kingdom of the Tonga on a sailing yacht skippered and crewed by all women. Emma also loved to snorkel and would snorkel wherever possible, including in Belize, in Nicaragua, and in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

Emma said she never intended to stay living in Central America forever. While in Guatemala, she noticed an ad on a bulletin board about a lot for sale in a trailer park at Discovery Bay, Washington. She thought thst would be a great place to continue kayaking. She bought the lot sight-unseen, and moved there, living in an RV for five-and-a-half years. In 2010, she moved to her home in Port Angeles. Emma did volunteer work in Port Angeles, working at the law library at the Court House for about five years and working at the book store of the Friends of the Library for about four years.

Emma Stevens Childers was born on 11/25/1935, in Phoenix, Arizona. She married Stephen Childers in 1956. She said she met her husband while she was working at an upscale department store as a window trimmer in downtown Phoenix, and he was a window trimmer manager at Penney's and he hired her to join his crew. They were married for 34 years. They had two children. She is predeceased by her husband, daughter, Gillian, and her twin-sister, Carol Thomason. She is survived by her two sisters, Mary Alice Long (Curla) of Phoenix, Arizona, and Martha Andress of Nampa, Idaho, her son, Blaine Childers, who lives in Port Angeles, and a granddaughter, Mace Kree, who lives in North Carolina.

Drennan & Ford Funeral Home in Port Angeles was entrusted with her arrangements. Please sign the online guestbook for her family at www.drennanford.com .