Ella Cobbs Cook, one of two students killed in the shooting on Dec. 13 at Brown University, was remembered for her “record of love” and her faith in “the belovedness of human beings” at a funeral Monday in Alabama.
Ms. Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore studying math and French — and a proud Southerner known on the Brown campus by the nickname “Ellabama” — would have been grateful for the heightened attention brought to her funeral, and in turn her faith, the Rev. Dr. Paul F. M. Zahl said in his eulogy at Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham.
“She would be glad in a way,” he said, that “the wide attention being given to her untimely and senseless death could give her witness a bigger stage, a more amplified mic.”
Ms. Cook was attending a review session for her final exam in an economics class when a gunman entered the lecture hall and opened fire. MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, 18, a freshman from Virginia who planned to major in biochemistry and neuroscience, also died in the shooting. Nine students were injured, and five remained hospitalized in stable condition on Monday.
The suspect in the shooting was identified as Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former graduate student in physics at Brown. Officials said he was also the suspect in the fatal shooting of a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nuno F.G. Loureiro, at his home in Brookline, Mass., on Dec. 15, two days after the shooting at Brown. Mr. Neves Valente was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a storage unit in Salem, N.H., on Dec. 18.
Investigators have not revealed a motive but said that Mr. Neves Valente and Dr. Loureiro, 47, were classmates in Portugal in the 1990s. Mr. Neves Valente left the Brown physics program after just a year, in 2001. Classmates recalled him as brilliant but sometimes volatile and angry.
At Ms. Cook’s funeral on Monday, held three days before Christmas in the church where she once taught Sunday school, mourners began by singing the carol “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”
During the service, which was streamed live on the church’s website, clergy offered prayers for the other victims of the shooting at Brown, for Dr. Loureiro and for the family of Mr. Neves Valente.
In Ms. Cook’s obituary, her family invited attendees to wear “Easter colors” to her funeral, and splashes of yellow and pink could be glimpsed in the crowded pews between the dark suit jackets.
In his eulogy, the Rev. Dr. Zahl did not try to provide an explanation for the young woman’s death.
“What about the why of this tragic taking away from us?” he said. “We cannot answer that question now. No one but God himself can.”
Standing in an ornately carved, dark wood pulpit above the congregation, and above the casket draped in a white cloth, the Rev. Dr. Zahl quoted a letter written to Ms. Cook’s parents by one of her Brown classmates, who described her “uniquely quiet gravity.”
A gifted musician who performed piano solos in pageants at Mountain Brook High School in Alabama, Ms. Cook studied abroad in Paris during high school, joined a sorority at Brown and served as vice president of the campus Republican club. In her obituary, her younger sister, Mary, remembered her as “the best big sister ever,” calling her “protective, responsible and selfless.”
On Monday, the Rev. Dr. Zahl said Ms. Cook’s funeral was a moment “to thank God for her light and her life” and to dwell in the love that had defined her.
He said he would pray “that everyone who has loved Ella so much in this life would be given a vivid individual feeling of Ella’s love still present with us.”
“Because Ella’s love is eternal,” he said.
Jenna Russell is the lead reporter covering New England for The Times. She is based near Boston.
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