To tell you the truth, I was surprised to hear of Koko's death....I had assumed she had been gone for a while now. I hadn't heard much about Koko in recent years.
The whole Koko phenomenon has been around much of my life. I feel a sad for the death but -to be honest- also sad at the ending of an era. Kind of like when the last outdoor movie theater shut down in our town, or our local drive-in malt shop closed.
Koko never had any offspring, and so we missed seeing if she could transfer her language skills to another generation. It was our bad luck that Koko - arguably among the world's most intelligent nonhuman primates - decided early on to have nothing to do with men-folk. Kind of makes one think.