Friday, May 8, 2009
Born in England, Susan came to the United States at the age of 19 as a nanny for an Orange County family. Four years later, she married Oscar Sanchez and they had two children. Oscar’s work took them to Texas, Florida, Scotland, and Michigan before they settled in Santa Barbara in 1993.
Susan was hired by Fielding Graduate University on a temp assignment in the Human & Organizational Development program. She soon moved to the position of Assistant to the Provost, a post she held until she retired in 2007. Susan quickly became known as a well-organized, hard-working, quick-witted, consistently courteous colleague. She was disarmingly honest and direct in a non-confrontational way.
Susan never learned to drive, so Amanda and then Oscar would dutifully drop her off and picked her up each day. Dressed colorfully and simply, she was a regular for lunch in Fielding’s kitchen, where she would carefully eat her modest repast of cheese and pears while sharing her twin passions--movies and jazz--with her tablemates.
An abiding admirer of poetry, Susan especially appreciated Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, whose opening lines bespeak Susan’s sensuality and respect for self:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Susan believed in beauty and found it in the smallest, most quiet and unassuming experiences. “I really feel that without beauty life is nothing but existence,” she wrote. “We have to recognize it, grasp at it when it appears, pursue it, or search for it, and often really persevere to get to the point where we can truly appreciate it. I don't necessarily mean the obvious beauty of music or art, but… the beauty of an instrument, talent, or an action promoting the general good, as well as the beauty of the effects of the creation upon the environment.”
Susan Sanchez
Susan was a talented artist working in the medium of needlepoint. Her abstracts were clever, bright, and meaningful. They were prized as gifts to mark special occasions and sought-after items for the School of Educational Leadership & Change’s silent auctions. She was also an avid collector of teapots and accessories and delicate glass objects. Consistent, perhaps, with her English roots, Susan loved the quiet pleasure of a garden with its birds and flowers.
In 2001, she was diagnosed with Bells Palsy, which permanently altered her lovely smile. Perhaps, more importantly, it led to the discovery of an unrelated brain tumor. Fortunately, it was benign and after its removal, Susan recovered well, but it was a frightening time for her and family and friends. In late 2005, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. After surgery and chemotherapy, she was cancer-free for two years before cancerous tumors were found in her abdomen in June 2008. The last ten months were difficult, but she went through them with characteristic clarity of purpose and strength of will.
In September 2008, she emailed her friends a list of “places that I go over and over.” Susan chose “Shoreline Park, Amazon.com, the doctors, and memory lane.”
Her email tag line embodied her English wit and humor: “Let us take a dish of tea and talk of absurdities."
There will be a Celebration of Susan’s Life on Monday, May 11, at 4 p.m. Parish Hall at the Unitarian Society at 1535 Santa Barbara St, Santa Barbara.