Levadia Sue Bergstrom

Levadia Sue Bergstrom (6/15/1940 – 9/26/2024)

Levadia Sue (Hudson) Bergstrom died peacefully in her sleep on September 26th, 2024. Sue was born in 1940 in Duncan, Oklahoma, where she and her family lived until moving to Kansas and then to Zionsville, Indiana. This frustrated her because she had loved attending kindergarten whereas school in Zionsville began with first grade. She was her Daddy’s girl, she loved sandlot sports, she played french horn in the marching band, and she graduated from Zionsville High School in 1957. She went on to attend Butler University (BA) and then the University of California Berkeley (MSW) and worked as a social worker in a walk-in clinic in San Jose.

She and Ted Bergstrom, her husband of 54 years, were married on November 28, 1969 in her hometown. They moved to St. Louis, Missouri where their son Carl and daughter Karen were born in 1971 and 1975 respectively. In 1976, the family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Sue lived for nearly 20 years. Along with leading field trips to local natural areas for the public school district, she delighted in working at Ulrich’s bookstore, an unofficial university bookstore for the University of Michigan.

In 1995, Sue and Ted moved to Santa Barbara. She took a job at the Adventures for Kids bookstore in Ventura, and threw herself into serving as a volunteer docent at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. She adored leading school trips, teaching children of all ages about the natural history of the Santa Barbara area and about the cultural heritage of the Chumash people who originally inhabited this land. She loved learning about the natural world, made leaf rubbings with kids, hatched monarch caterpillars collected from milk-weed leaves, and kept notebooks full of plant names and descriptions from the courses she took with botanical gardens colleagues. Then, when leading kids on field trips, she would forsake the scientific names and encourage the kids to name the plants themselves.

More than anything, Sue believed in children. She believed in their goodness. She reveled in their wonder. She saw the potential in every one of them. She believed that the best thing we could for the world was to invest in them with all our hearts. She loved her grandchildren; she collected dragonflies for them to admire under magnifying glasses; gathered backyard lemons for them, and supplied metal shovels to make the best sandcastles.

She is survived by her husband Ted, her children, Carl and Karen, four grandchildren, Helen, Teddy, Atalaya and Sol, and her extended family members and friends. Her family is grateful to all the people who loved her, especially her caregivers in recent years.

Donations in memory of Sue can be made through contributions to Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens, Santa Barbara Natural History Museum, or Direct Relief.