Valerie Epps said that she didn’t take the proposal seriously.

“I was sufficiently interested to hope it wasn’t a joke, though,” she added.

Epps, who suffered from diabetes, had previously experienced health troubles while dean. He underwent double-bypass heart surgery in August 1995, and he received a kidney transplant four months later from his wife.

“It’s important that I protect her investment,” Epps told The Crimson at the time.

Epps’ wife said her husband went into Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston the Monday before his death to undergo surgery for an aneurysm that was discovered in his aorta.

Valerie Epps said that she and her husband were told that the odds of surviving the operation for a completely healthy person were 50 percent, but that without the procedure, death would be imminent.

Epps “made it through the surgery fine,” his wife said.

Two days later, though, his liver failed, eventually leading to his death.

“The way he died was unexpected,” Valerie Epps said. “The fact that he died was not unexpected.”

“During the fall, he really wasn’t well at all. He was in the hospital three times,” she said.

Epps is survived by his wife; by two sons, Josiah T. Epps ’98 and Caleb S. Epps ’03; and by his brothers, Martin L. Epps, of Jackson, Miss., and Heibert G. Epps, of Houston, Texas.

He was buried in Cambridge’s Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.