Suzanne Donlon

1937 - 2023

Suzanne Donlon
September 24, 1937 - June 10, 2023
Suzanne Saunders Donlon died peacefully at home on June 10th. She was born in Oakland, in 1937, to Helen Crichton Cook and Thomas Bernard Saunders. At the time, her family was living in Antwerp, Belgium; they left Europe at the onset of World War II and settled in Mexico City, where Suzanne and her older brother, John, were raised.
Growing up in Mexico inspired in Suzanne a lifelong love of romance languages, travel, inter-generational family gatherings, and fresh, seasonal fruit. She attended the American School, in Mexico City, and later boarded at Castilleja School, in Palo Alto. In the summer, the Saunders family often spent time with their Cook cousins at Zephyr Cove, in Lake Tahoe.
Suzanne graduated from Mills College, where she studied French and spent her junior year abroad in Paris. After college, she worked in Mexico City (where she proudly summited Popocatépetl, a 17,694 snow-capped volcano), before moving to San Francisco While living on Taylor Street, she met the debonair David Donlon and they married in Mexico City in 1962. David and Suzanne settled in San Francisco, where they raised their three daughters in a Victorian house on Fillmore Street. The Donlons were known for their love of travel, old-world elegance, and delight in entertaining family and friends with panache.
Suzanne spent many years volunteering: at Edgewood School, the Junior League, St. Vincent de Paul School, and the Schools of the Sacred Heart. She loved hiking annually with friends in Yosemite's High Country, swimming across Tomales Bay, and walking from San Francisco to Inverness.
Suzanne had a radiant smile and a curious and generous outlook, and she loved people of all ages. Her children and grandchildren will remember how she would magically appear on the top of a ridge with hot chocolate and homemade huckleberry muffins as they awoke from a foggy night of camping. She was the most thoughtful of friends, and treasured all her friends in turn, especially those from her childhood, her hiking group, and her book clubs. She had an uncanny ability to remember extended family trees in her head and took delight in knowing as many as five generations of the same family. Growing up in Mexico taught her never to waste a thing, and she loved having possessions mended, repaired, or repurposed-and given to just the right person. She was a stamp collector, and she corresponded with a vast network of friends via letter, postcard, email and text in English, Spanish, and French until the very end.
Suzanne was diagnosed with interstitial lung disease in 2018. She handled her illness with impeccable grace, consistently meeting each day with unbridled gratitude and amazement. Her life was a testament to sharing the power of love and optimism with everyone she met.
She is survived by her loving daughters, Diana, Frances, and Alexandra; her devoted sons-in-law, Warren Karlenzig and Jeff Treene; and her adoring grandchildren, Jackson, Owen, Sammy, Suzie, Katie and Charlie. She also leaves her beloved brother, John, sister-in-law Mary Jo, nephew Tom Saunders, cousins John Cook and Sally Adams, sister and brother-in-law, Diana and Bernie Caldwell and sister-in-law Eve Donlon. Suzanne was predeceased, in 2017, by her husband David, after 55 years of marriage.
The family would like to thank Dr. Michael Lafemina, By The Bay Health, Natalia Meyerson, and Lynnette Koroivawai for their professionalism and extraordinary kindness.
A Memorial Service will be held at 3 p.m. Tuesday, August 8, at St. Anselm Church in Ross. Suzanne asked that gifts in her memory be made to either: KWMR community radio, or to The Intergenerational Fund, a climate-action scholarship established in her honor at SoilCentric.org