Visitation scheduled for professor’s daughter

IU professor Eric Rasmusen’s daughter’s visitation and funeral will be Thursday and Friday, respectively.

Rasmusen’s daughter, Elizabeth, 9, was pronounced dead July 13 after an Amtrak train struck the vehicle she was in. Her grandparents, Benjamin Rasmusen, 82, and Marilyn Rasmusen, 81, also died in the accident. Two other children, 10 and 7, were injured in the crash.

The visitation will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Deremiah Frye Funeral Home. The funeral will be 10 a.m. Friday at Sherwood Oaks Church.

“We are blessed,” Eric Rasmusen said in a statement. “We have four wonderful children, and we had Lizzie for nine years. My parents lived their threescore and 10 and more, and died quickly, and I was able to share 50 happy years with them. ... Lizzie was so sweet, helpful and affectionate that we worried about how people would hurt her when she grew up. She loved God better than any of us, and He has saved her from care. So many are so blessed to have known her, and we got to know her best.”

Elizabeth was a student at Lighthouse Christian Academy.

In an e-mail to the Indiana Daily Student, Rasmusen wrote Elizabeth loved visiting him in the Kelley School.

“Just in the past couple of weeks, she attended the Business Economics Brown Bag Lunch to hear me talk about the Chrysler bankruptcy,” he wrote. “Well, she read a “Mandy” book most of the time, but she liked being there.”