02/06/2010: "Susan Meredith"

October 10, 1918 ~ January 20, 2010

Susan Meredith has left this world but she has also left a host of memories in the people who knew her. She was not a person who could easily abide a quiet life. Despite contracting polio and loosing muscles in her legs at a very young age, she led a very active life.

She was always a part of the childhood football games in the Seattle neighborhood where she grew up, partly because of her vibrant personality and partly because she was the only one who owned a football. She played center and she would hike the ball and then try to tackle the person right in front of her. As she grew, she developed a strong affinity for water sports. She was a member of the Girl Scouts and was a waterfront counselor at camp Robinswold on Hood Canal. She also enjoyed other sports such as horseback riding, skiing and bicycling.

After graduating from Broadway High School, Susan attended the University of Washington, where she received a B.S. in bacteriology. During World War II she worked at Fort Lewis as a civilian, testing the rations that were being sent over seas.

The most fondly remembered and life-changing job in her working career was on a public health ship in coastal Alaska. The mission was to survey the Alaskan native population for instances of tuberculosis. In addition to the survey they brought health care to a very isolated population. She felt extremely privileged to meet these wonderful and resourceful people at a time when, in some places at least, their traditional ways of life were still intact. From this experience she could see first hand, in a very real way, how joyful life could be in the absence of material wealth and in the presence of a loving and committed community.

She was also introduced to the native style of water transportation, the kayak. This became one of her lifelong, great passions. She returned to Seattle to care for her ailing mother after two years in Alaska. In Seattle she replaced her shipboard adventures with sailing and kayaking in her own native waters. She met her husband Jim and together they and their daughter, Jeannie, enjoyed the outdoor life that is so plentiful in the Pacific Northwest. They lived and worked in Seattle until they could retire to the log home that they built with the help of many friends, on their summer property on San Juan Island.

There followed thirty years of close friendships and devotion to the San Juan Island community. Those friends, and the love and care she received back from the community have repaid her in full. Her friends and the community, her kayaking and her garden, and the nature around her, along with her devotion to her family, made Susan’s life full and rich in the things she valued most, the intangible connections that she saw so long ago in the native communities along the Bering Sea.