• My mom, Susan, Sue, passed away at her home last Tuesday morning. Her wishes were that people recognize her life through donations to the Santa Barbara Food Bank and Save the Children. My brother and I are figuring out everything else; email me at [email protected] if you’d like to stay updated.
  • Having spent the last 5 weeks with my mom, her doctors’ ongoing prognoses that she “has days” was incorrect for quite a while until it wasn’t. We got to the zoo and the Botanic Gardens together. I enjoyed flustering the hospice nurse over the phone by passing along their questions directly, like “hey mom, how are your bowels?” and the nurse’s response of “oh, oh, I didn’t realize she was awake”. To her doctor’s surprise the day before she passed, what would be my mom’s last meal: taquitos.
  • I learned the stories behind all the butts in my mom’s nude paintings. And that, though my mom wouldn’t have the opportunity to exercise it, California has an End of Life Option.
  • I’m grateful for my family, friends, and colleagues who have been gracious and supportive. Both to those I’ve told, and those who are yet to find out. Thank you.

  • I wrote this biography as part of a family history for Mr. Harris’s 10th grade humanities class in 1999 (“fabulous photos, good layout! A”)

    Born in 1947 (though when interviewed maintained it was 1964), and grew up in the era of McCarthyism, bomb shelters, Elvis, Sputnik, Rock and Roll, and the Beatles. That got her through high school. Then she finished the sixties with a bachelors in painting from California College of the Arts and her masters in Library Science at UC Berkeley. Her first library job was in charge of the Art and Architecture collection at San Jose State. She met my father in Library school and got married in 1971. She quit her job to get married and moved to Alaska where she was in charge of the largest medical library in State of Alaska. She did that for two years and then they moved to Ithaca New York, where she was a library outreach consultant for a five county public library system. At the end of that period she had my brother, and moved to California. I was born four years after, and later she became very active in the Friends of the Poway Library, working on getting a new library in Poway. After divorcing she drew on her experiences as a volunteer and paid substitute in school libraries and decided to become a school librarian which necessitated getting both a teaching credential and a library media teachers credential, which she will finish next year.

    Sue