Eunice J. Kushman

1922 - 2025

Eunice J. Kushman
07/03/1922 - 05/22/2025
Right after World War II, Eunice Jacobsen, born in 1922 and raised in small town Worcester, Mass., took a train cross country toward San Francisco. Her plan was to visit a friend to see if maybe California and The City had a place for her. Her train ended across the Bay and her friend met her at the station. Together they steamed west on the ferry.
As they closed in, San Francisco of the 1940s rose up, the Ferry Building, Coit Tower, the textured hills rolling off the Bay. Still on the water, Eunice turned to her friend. She said, "I'm home."
If ever there was a woman born to be a San Franciscan and Northern Californian, it was Eunice - curious, open-minded, compassionate, accepting-yet-always-questioning Eunice. She lived the rest of her life in San Francisco, then Daly City. Met Bernard Kushman, married in 1950, and moved to Daly City in 1951. Eunice died on May 22 at age 102.
In her nearly eight decades in Northern California, Eunice was a force with community groups, environmentalists and the schools. She was the first PTA President of George Washington Elementary in Daly City. She was powered by her belief that she could help make things better with moral code built on decency and kindness and her innate dynamism. Often she was right.
And she worked most fiercely to help people who needed mental health support, partly because her late son Gary fought schizophrenia, but also because she saw all the ways patients were let down. Eunice worked for years with the National Association of Mentally Ill and was president of the San Mateo County chapter. She was a director on the San Mateo County Mental Health Board. And she served for 32 years on the board of directors of Caminar, a San Mateo County-based non-profit supporting people in Northern California with mental illness and behavioral health needs.
When Caminar opened new offices in 2012, The San Mateo Patch wrote, "the ribbon was cut by longtime Board member Eunice Kushman, a mental health activist and one of the most influential citizens in the history of mental health services in San Mateo County." When she retired, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors honored her with a resolution that said, in part, Eunice "personifies the mission of Caminar" and was the "voice of history" to help guide it through turbulent times and into the future.
Just as much, Eunice's formidable spirit, tolerance, caring and good humor touched so many people drawn into her gravity, from family and friends to neighbors, clerks, receptionists, delivery folks, or the 19-year-old at Macy's makeup counter. Her resonance with everyone around her only grew in her later years. People came away marveling at her energy and aspirations for a better world, and they came away smiling. Until the day she died, even her doctors and nurses were amazed and charmed by her positive outlook, curiosity and empathy.
For all her community work and influence, and for all the connections she made and nurtured, what mattered most to Eunice was her love of her two sons, daughter-in-law and husband, and the welcoming home she created with the same curiosity, kindness and acceptance that drew her to San Francisco.
She leaves behind her son, Rick, daughter-in-law, Deborah Meltvedt, and a legacy of charitable hearts, open mindedness, a better working mental health establishment in San Mateo County, and the lessons that life is best when you look outward and that a full life means caring about the people in yours and about people who simply need to be cared about.
To honor Eunice, please consider a donation to Caminar for Mental Health, www.caminar.org, 2600 South El Camino Real, Ste 200, San Mateo, CA 94403.