Sofia Kohli

Sofia completed her earthly sojourn, peacefully, on Wednesday, October 11, 2012, her family at her side. Sofia was born on March 16, 1942, in Riverside, California, the daughter of Roberta Philo Dudley, a Yale graduate, and Dr. Exum Beckwith Walker, an Atlanta neurosurgeon who was the first in the world to go in through the front of the neck to operate on the spine, and who was neurosurgeon for the Pacific Fleet during WWII. That wartime duty was the reason Sofia and her brother were born in California. After the war, Sofia's family returned to Atlanta, where Sofia spent her early years.

In the late forties, Sofia's parents divorced and in 1951, her mother married Atlanta businessman Thornwell Jacobs, Jr., son of Dr. Thornwell Jacobs, who was a Presbyterian minister and the refounder of Oglethorpe University. Sofia was a top student and skipped the 4th grade. She attended the Westminster Schools from 8th thru 11th grade. In 1958, the family moved to South Daytona, Florida, where in 1959, Sofia graduated from Seabreeze Private High School. Also in 1959, Sofia and her brother chipped in $175 each and bought a 1922 Model T Ford, which in the sixties, she and her brother used in political campaigns for Thornwell when he served three terms as Mayor of South Daytona.

Upon graduation from high school, Sofia entered Stetson University, driving a 1953 Packard. She later transferred to the University of Florida, where in 1964, she received a BA in Business Administration with a minor in Foreign Trade. She later did graduate work in electrical engineering. She was fascinated by the peoples of the world and taught herself more than a dozen languages, including Hindi and Urdu, becoming proficient by conversing with foreign students attending U of F.

After getting her BA, she found few companies wanted to hire women for executive positions. She accepted a position with the Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC, but later returned to Gainesville, Florida, where she established a typing business she named Superfish Typing, the name based upon her being a Pisces. She specialized in typing doctoral dissertations, and Superfish Typing was unique in that foreign students could write their dissertation in their native language and Sofia would translate it as she typed. Googling her name online brings up numerous dissertations thanking Sofia for her professionalism, patience, and excellent typing.

Initially, Sofia used IBM Selectric typewriters with the "dancing ball," her favorite being one made in England for 50 cycle current, but because the U.S. has 60 cycle current, it ran much faster here, allowing Sofia to type faster. She could type over 200 wpm, which was faster than the electric typewriters could handle.

In the early eighties, she switched to computers, starting with a Radio Shack Model III. When she retired in 2007, she was using a high powered computer she had designed herself, but was still using the old ALPS keyboards with mechanical keys, because they were faster than the newer keyboards, and she did her word processing in WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, because the Windows operating system uses graphic displays which could not keep up with her typing.

While running Superfish Typing in Gainesville, Sofia met the love of her life, Michael Clemons, an electrical engineer and fellow Gator, and they have been together every since. In 1985, they moved to the Orlando area and Sofia continued Superfish Typing there. In the early nineties, a past client of Superfish Typing asked Sofia to work with his company, Storm L. Richards & Associates, in producing Environmental Assessment and endangered species reports. He would do the field work and Sofia would produce the reports. She did that until retiring in 2007. When the field trips required him to be away for a period of time, Sofia would babysit his pet Iguanas.

Sofia loved all living things and had cats for pets most of her life. She also loved to watch the little green anole lizards doing their thing outside her window, and she often kept crickets as she so enjoyed to hear them sing.

Sofia was a gifted artist and amused friends with her letters containing cartoon critters drawn in the borders, invariably up to mischief. She loved to draw spiders, lizards, and snakes with full lips and long eyelashes.

Sofia's hobbies included astrology, which she did very scientifically and with precision few in the world bother with. She had companies that would have her do astrological research to find the best times for them to do certain things pertaining to their businesses.

Sofia loved photography and sewing and made much of her own clothing. She was a long time aficionado of Indian culture, including movies, music, food and fashion and hand made many beautiful sarees that she enjoyed wearing.

Sofia also enjoyed making plush dolls, both human and animal dolls. She would also create design drawings showing how to make her dolls, these for publication in doll magazines so others could make them. Some of her dolls made the covers of these magazines, one being a frog doll. Her dolls included incredible details such as individual toes and fingers, even with nails, and she created a technique for doing eyes that utilized epoxy to create a 3D effect.

Both Sofia and Michael loved Volkswagen busses and they own two 1973 models, Sofia's being a camper. Sofia also loved Gator football, the Young and the Restless, and discussing world affairs, politics, science, and theology. To support her thirst for knowledge, she subscribed to Brighthouse, Dish and DirecTV, in order to get channels from all over the world. Her favorite TV show during her last years was a food show on Pakistan's Masala TV. The language spoken on Masala TV is Urdu, which is one of the languages Sofia knew. She owned some stock and tracked the stock prices daily. She also dearly loved marathon phone calls to her friends and family.

In addition to her soul mate, Michael Clemons, survivors include her brother, Exum Walker, Daytona Beach, an aunt and uncle, Lois and Ed Cottrell in Dunedin, and cousins Miki (and Jose) Vasquez in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and George (and Christine) Walker, III, in Carrollton, Texas. In addition to being predeceased by her parents and stepfather, Sofia was predeceased by her stepsister Harriet Ann Jacobs Simons.

Sofia loved every living thing and in lieu of flowers, donations may be made to your local humane society or animal shelter.

Arrangements entrusted to Newcomer Funeral Home, East Orlando Chapel.