Ena Urbach

Ena Urbach passed away at home on August 7th after a 16 month battle with cancer. She passed peacefully, surrounded by loved ones. Ena was cheerful and pain-free up until the end.

Ena was born in New York and she grew up in New Jersey. She was a young girl full of horsey love who enjoyed looking sharp in her riding habit. She pursued many different and interesting careers in her life. She was a projectionist in the Coolidge Corner Theater in Cambridge, MA and a seamstress sewing outdoor gear. She attended Yale, when few women did, where she got her undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology. She went on to MIT, where there were even fewer women, where she got a dual PhD in Civil Engineering and Microbial Molecular Biology.

She met her husband Jim at Oregon State University when he kept asking Brian, her lab mate, “Who is the curly haired woman in your lab?” Brian finally told Ena to talk to Jim because, “He likes you”. They started dating in July of 1997 and bought a house together in January of 1998. They were goofy in-love and that remained throughout their whole relationship.

Ena faced many challenges in her life but she always did so with strength and determination. She left a tenure-track position to run a small biotech startup. When both founders walked away, she learned about writing business plans and finding investors. She kept the company afloat for several years until the Great Recession of 2008. When she and her husband moved to Seattle, she reinvented her career again asking, “what do I enjoy doing?” She built a new business building custom databases for small companies. She loved learning about the niches of the economy that her clients filled. She considered her clients friends and enjoyed her time working with them.

She was an active outdoor person who enjoyed open-water swimming, skiing, biking, hiking and walking the dog. She loved the arts including contemporary dance performances, museums and art fairs, and plays.

She is survived by her husband Jim Phelps, her sister Lisa Urbach and her nephew Joe Chauffe and her labradoodle Tuppence.

There will be a small celebration of life and her and Jim’s home on September 5th.