Emily Locke White

Emily Locke White, 42, of Ridgefield CT, passed away in the embrace of her mother and father on June 2, 2026 at White Plains Hospital, White Plains NY. She was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer in May 2023. She lived her whole life with strength, courage and grace.

Emily was born in San Antonio, TX on February 10, 1984 to Elizabeth Buck White and Donald Lewis White. She moved with her family to Ridgefield in 1987 and made it home.

From the start, Emily was drawn to the outdoors and to faraway places. As a Brownie at Farmingville Elementary, she set out on the path that led to her earning the Girl Scout Gold Award her junior year at RHS. At Mount Holyoke College, where she graduated in 2006, she spent a semester abroad in New Zealand and weeks kayaking off the coast of Chile with Outward Bound.

After college she settled in NYC and attended the NYU Summer Publishing Institute. In 2007 she joined Macmillan Publishers.  As a member of the academic marketing team, she worked happily on the top floor of the Flatiron Building for nearly a decade. She returned home to Ridgefield in 2017 and joined Quarry Ridge Animal Hospital, managing digital marketing for the practice.

Emily was also a prolific writer and she expressed her love of language in poems, journals, and in the hundreds of handwritten cards and letters she sent to her friends, her family, and even her doctors. They were among the things her circle knew her by and have become keepsakes for many.

Emily believed, above all, in being kind to people, to animals, to the planet, and most of all to her family. She loved her Labrador retrievers Maggie, Dixie, Birdie, and Lily, and gathered a new roster of client pets she came to love nearly as much when she began pet-sitting for friends. She deeply loved her brother, William L. White, and his wife, Alyssa N. White, of Washington DC, and officiated at their wedding in 2015. The birth of their daughter, Remira, in January 2026 was Emily’s greatest thrill of all.

Emily’s kindness reached far beyond her immediate circle. In the months after her diagnosis, she and William founded the Back 40 Foundation together, a family-led effort to give young people the space to explore, create, and grow on their own terms. Its first grants, in May 2025, went to the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University and Camp Jewell, a YMCA Camp in Colebrook, CT — fitting choices for a writer who loved the outdoors.

In addition to her parents, brother, sister-in-law, and niece, Emily is survived by her devoted extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. She will be dearly missed by all.

A memorial service in celebration of Emily’s life will be held in the fall at a date and time to be announced.

Contributions in her memory may be made to Camp Jewell YMCA - https://campjewell.org/ and to the Connecticut Writing Project - https://cwpfairfield.org/contact/. 

Visit https://back40.foundation/ if you wish to learn more about what these organizations meant to Emily.

Kane Funeral Home is in care of arrangements.