This webpage is dedicated to Hope Healy Koontz, my paternal aunt and my cohort in writing and publishing the History of the Hope and Healy Families of County Mayo, Ireland. She began taking notes on her family back in the 1970s; she made her brothers and sisters write up timelines of their lives; she traveled to England, Canada and Minnesota many times to visit relatives, do research on the family and gather old family photos which she brought home for me to copy. She wrote a book on the Swainson branch of our family in England. She spent years gathering family memorabilia, family group sheets, birth, marriage and death certificates; she taped conversations with relatives and then transcribed the tapes. Hope started using a computer in her research in the 1980s and sent many emails back and forth, especially when we were working on our Healy and Hope books. She left me all of her boxes and folders of her research on the Miller and Spurstow families. She was the matriarch of our Healy family, loved and now missed by all. She was a true inspiration to me and to all the family.

Anne Healy Field

Photograph of Hope taken by Anne Healy Field, December 2000, at the dining room table where we were hard at work on the Healy and Hope family book.

Hope Healy Koontz, 1919-2010

Hope celebrated her 90th birthday in December 2009 surrounded by her many friends and family. After a fall in the spring of 2010 when she broke both legs, Hope began a slow decline, retaining her sense of humor and love for her family until the end. She died August 6, 2010, in San Diego and was buried with other family members in Holy Cross Cemetery in San Diego. Hope was the youngest child of James Henry Healy and Lucy Gertrude Miller. She is greatly missed.