Elaine Kloepfel

Elaine Kloepfel March 16, 1936 - January 8th, 2022

From 1989 - 1993, Elaine was employed as the Director of Nursing with St. Joseph's Hospital in Hillsboro with the charge to get them certified by The Joint Commission on Hospitals. After doing this successfully. Elaine stayed in the Quality Improvement arena by working with MetaStar back in Madison. MetaStar worked under a Medicare contract to assure quality of care for Medicare recipients. In 1993, Medicare awarded MetaStar and similar organizations in 4 other states a new contract for improving the care of patients with Coronary Heart Disease. Elaine was the coordinator for this national project and remained working on this as well as other projects until her retirement in 2001. It was extremely gratifying to see the improvement in hospitals and clinics.

After a retirement trip to Hawaii to see the Badgers play and to spend a week on Kauai with 3 friends, Elaine got busy with retirement and wondered when she had had the time to work.

Travels continued as did more golf, more bridge, more theater, and volunteering at WHA-TV. In 2002, she started the first Red Hat Chapter in Madison, thus becoming a queen. She took a group of Red Hatters to London one year and to Ireland a few years later. She got to spend a few weeks each winter with her Kindergarten friend, Jone, at The Villages in Florida and during the summer always spent time with her cousins in Minnesota as well as going with friends up to Door Co.

She was a member of The Madison Civics Club, AAUW, and several professional organizations. As her father told her, live each day as if it would be your last one. She also tried to emulate her cat companions over the years and set aside time for pure relaxation. She lived during a period of exploding growth in technology - from cars with running boards to cars that park themselves, space exploration, and the bane of her later life - computerization although there were many aspects of using a computer that were very helpful.

She thanks Maureen Aceto McCabe for keeping her financially solvent through most of her life and to her "sister" Barb Dunbar for her friendship and to all her friends in the Milwaukee and Madison areas. She hopes that those remaining friends will get together at lunch and lift a glass of spirits in her memory. Her remains will be buried with her father and mother who preceded her in death.

She is survived by many nieces and nephews and the grands including Susan Rocheleau, Bob (Lisa) Ulrich, Brooke Ulrich, Jett Ulrich Micech and cousins Gerald Caster (Paulette), Beryl (Frank) Semler. She was preceded in death by her parents, half-sisters Grace Ulrich, Lorraine Pottner, Marian Konowalski and Mildred Rocheleau.