In Our Care
Susan English Fetcho (Miller) January 22, 1953 – July 31, 2024
Susan English Fetcho (Miller) January 22, 1953 – July 31, 2024
Anyone touched by Susan Fetcho will miss her deeply. Her knowing smile, her thoughtful pauses, her regal presence, her pleasing voice—all her unique traits are remembered and recounted time and again by those she encountered along her epic, influential journey. Out of many amazing qualities, one rare gift that stands out to close friends and colleagues was her wisdom when conflicts surfaced. You could always count on Susan to listen intently and respond compassionately with a calming presence. Along the way, Susan cultivated a broad, grateful community of friends and artists, neighbors and gourmands with her soulmate, David. They filled the world by wholeheartedly sharing their music, wit, and light. They were so well paired that sometimes it is hard to find the thread where one begins and the other ends.
Susan entered the world in New York City on January 20th, 1953 as the first of three children born to Lois Edith (Reichhard) Miller and Ryland Duke Miller, starting life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She is descended from the Adam Miller family, who befriended Daniel Boone, as the first settlers to farm Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and erect a log cabin, which still stands.
The Millers moved to Deerfield, Illinois in 1958, where Susan excelled in gymnastics, dance, concert viola, snow skiing and horsemanship. She loved riding the family’s sturdy Belgian/quarter horse cross, Apollo, named to honor NASA’s moon missions, and skillfully competed in the arcane art of Barrel Racing (!) and other equestrian events. Susan graduated from Deerfield High School in 1971 and the University of Denver in 1975 after a year in Heidelberg, Germany, studying abroad and traveling extensively throughout Europe.
Throughout her life, Susan developed close friendships with all the family’s animals—especially the dogs—and picked up an encyclopedic appreciation for flowers, birds, and hummingbirds in particular. In recent years, Susan and David delighted in the antics and attitudes of their Belgian Tervurens, BeBop and Tango.
Susan married her soul mate David on June 25, 1977. Separating their efforts can be challenging, as they mentored each other for 45 years, distinct and yet conjoined in their efforts and intellect. Together, they gifted hundreds of individuals with their talents, wit, and warmth, combining their innate creativity and spiritual energies to countless and amazing projects as well as many earnest conversations, always driven by a passionate love for the arts and for truth. They eagerly shared their awe of the possibility of infinite creativity at arts conferences and workshops that took them from Oakland to Australia, New Zealand, Bali, Chile, and Oxford.
For over 25 years, Susan taught music, dance and art as a Performing Arts faculty member at St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Oakland, California, never ceasing to be surprised and delighted by the imaginations of her young students. The opportunity to open up a young person’s eyes to the joy that the arts can produce always drove her to put 200% of herself into teaching. Susan’s love for music wove a thread through her entire life, from elementary school to high school church choirs, to joyful participation right up to the end in Appalachian Shape-Note and Sacred Harp meetings around America and with a local Balkan Community Choir called Zele. In recent years, her foundation supported artists like Kitka, an Oakland-based women’s choir performing Balkan and Slavic music. Instruments, guitars, whistles, ocarinas, tambourines and keyboards were available for ready music making complimented a beautiful collection of original art work throughout the Fetcho home.
In the 1980s, Susan and David co-founded the New Berkeley Performance Consort, an intermedia and collaborative performance ensemble. They ultimately composed, produced, directed, and performed in more than a dozen original dance/music/theatre productions for theatrical, collegial, and liturgical venues over a fourteen-year period. As a dancer, Susan remained close friends with her beloved core group of dancers all her life. NBPC performed and taught in the greater San Francisco Bay area and internationally, by invitation. During the unwieldy age of film and non-digital media, NBPC incorporated original film, live acting, sculpture, recordings and video segments as integral creative components, collaborating with college students and professional artists. Such works intentionally challenged the creative status quo and the clichés that so often characterized in religious art at the time.
In the late ‘80s, the Fetchos founded BàCAN, the Bay Area Christians in the Arts Network, overseeing a fellowship of artists based at Berkeley’s First Presbyterian Church and New College Berkeley for more than a decade. They taught liturgical design at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, and accepted invitations to lecture widely on issues pertaining to the need for spiritual expression in the contemporary arts and artistic expression in theological studies. Susan and David collaborated as liturgical designers/consultants with many churches and national organizations here and abroad. They strove to bridge the divide between theology and the arts during conference workshops for IMAGE: A Journal of the Arts and Religion (1992, 1993), New College Berkeley, CIVA/Christians In the Visual Arts (1995), and the C.S. Lewis Foundation (1998) in Oxford. Susan served as a trustee of Radix Magazine, a thoughtful and incisive interfaith publication, for years. They also co-produced many documentaries at great personal expense, eventually through Found LightTV, including Out of Bounds, a refreshing look at seven emerging Bay Area artists (1995); Los Dias de los Muertos for the Oakland Museum of California (2001); and I Can Feel Another Planet in My Soul, about the renowned outsider/visionary artist, Howard Finster, which debuted at Lehigh University (2008). Found Light TV also produced programs for educational, religious, non-profit and corporate markets.
Susan is survived by her brother Craig Montgomery Miller (Judy Danskin) of Alexandria, Ontario, Canada; her cousins Penny Payne Olson (Michael) of Port Washington and Greenport, NY and Holly English-Payne of Proctor, Vermont; John Miller of Evanston, Illinois; Liz Miller Leonard of Wilmette, Illinois; and Laura Miller Bala of Cleveland, Ohio; her niece Cassady Rebecca Johnson Einglett (Bradd) of Hohenwald, Tennessee; and great-nephew Adam Johnson (Ashley) and their daughters in Columbus, Georgia.
Over the past decade, Susan bravely met the medical challenges of her life with courage, grace and a great sense of humor. A devoted researcher, Susan and her close-knit circle of friends quickly determined diet and exercise regimens to improve her prognosis. Her first bout with cancer came and went more than a decade ago, and life went on for years afterwards. Facing her own mortality during this time, she bravely elected to travel, to sing, to perform, and to live life even more fully. As she wrote in the East Bay Times:
My brother is a professional harmonica player. From him I’ve learned that the instrument is animated by two actions: blowing and sucking. Sounds rude, but it’s true. Inhale and exhale. Ebb and flow. Yin and yang. Life’s all about balance. When cancer shows up, you realize that yours has become—as in the film Koyaanisqatsi—a life out of balance, a microcosm of our planet’s crisis.
Learning that her first cancer treatment had been successful, she reflected:
You resolve to excise the phrase ‘sometime we should’ from your vocabulary. You pray for deliverance from the demon of multi-tasking, discipling yourself to your Zen-master dogs and your kindergarten students who practice presence in the now. You keep gratitude lists: artichokes, Bebop, bees, David, family, friends, pesto, Tango, zydeco. You become an omnivore, a slow-food flexitarian, each colorful fruit and vegetable, grain and legume bringing unique cancer-blocking phytochemicals to the healing potluck. You sing your heart out, your attention so completely absorbed that time disappears. Ellington and Elvis. Balkan women’s music and sacred harp. You sail past Angel Island into the sunset and back to Berkeley under a sky full of stars, your gaze rising to meet the curved embrace of their flickering benediction. You give thanks for the ecology of kindness that has sustained you, and hope that the pursuit of balance, of work and rest, passion and play, mission and creativity might just save your life. You remember to breathe. Out and in. In and out.
In February 2021, David unexpectedly passed away, and shortly after this shocking loss, cancer challenged a different area of Susan’s body, requiring surgery and a protracted and difficult chemo management protocol. Friends were relieved when this regimen extended her life once more, enabling joyful reunions and travel to Mendocino (a favorite getaway with David), Spain, and the Northwest USA. Susan also rejoiced that the treatment somehow resulted in ‘the best haircut’ of her life—so good that she could retire her trademark hats, essential in the past for corralling her wild and wayward hair. Silver linings indeed.
Susan mentored hundreds of children as the Fetchos responded to their inability to have their own by gathering a vibrant village of ‘multi-talented artists and good people’, as Susan would put it, who benefited from their companionship immeasurably. All who knew her are thankful for this community of helpers and advisors, who contributed with all their hearts during Susan’s efforts to coordinate David’s memorial, and the last days that followed. We are thankful that Susan now knows where we go in the hereafter that she sang and danced and wrote about so beautifully, in anticipation.
From “The Farthest Field” by David Dodson, selected by Susan for David’s memorial service:
There is a land high on a hill
Where I am going, there is a voice that calls to me…
…The fragrant flowers, the days and hours
Will not be counted, and peaceful songs will fill the air
Walk with me and we will see the mystery revealed
When one day we wend our way up to the farthest field.
Oh my dear friends, I truly love
To hear your voices a-lifted up in radiant song
Though through the years, we all have made
Our separate choices, we’ve ended here where we belong.
Vyolet Chu
Celebration of Life
August 9, 2024 at 11:00am
Vyolet Chu, at 101 years old, passed away peacefully, surrounded by her children, Dorinne Low and Alan Chu. She is predeceased by her loving husband, Daniel and her 2nd daughter, Liane. She was the last of her family of 9 children to leave this life.
Vyolet is survived by her daughter, Dorinne Low, son, Alan Chu; grandsons, Christian Low, Ryan Low (Panner), Todd Low, Kumar Corcoran; great grandchildren, Santino Low, Nina Low, Simone Low; and many nieces and nephews.
Vyolet was a pillar of the Chinese community having been a founding member and past president of the Chinese Historical Society of America. She served as an officer for the Chinese Cultural Center and was appointed by Dianne Feinstein and served as Asian Art Commissioner for the City of San Francisco for 12 years.
Vyolet and Daniel came to San Francisco from Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1954 with their two daughters, Dorinne and Liane. In 1957, their son Alan was born. Vyolet worked for Singer Sewing Company and after some years, took a position with Trader Vic's as buyer for all of the restaurant's gift shops.
She opened her own wig and cosmetics store aptly name Ultra Vyolet's in the 1960's. She furnished hair pieces to cancer patients and made such an impact for so many cancer patients that she received an award from the American Cancer Society.
At the age of 45, she went back to school to earn her bachelor's degree and graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of San Francisco. She never slowed down with her fundraising efforts for worthy projects into her 80's and even then, was mentoring her juniors. Even after retirement, Vyolet continued to give her time toward community fund raising.
One of her fund-raising efforts was for building a school computer lab in Xishuangbana in Yunnan Province, China, for the indigent teenage girls in the region.
Not one to let moss gather, Vyolet and Daniel traveled extensively. Their trips took them to China, Russia, Europe, the Middle East, Turkey, Egypt, Southeast Asia, Taiwan and of course Hawaii. One of the last things she said she wanted to do was to go back to Honolulu in June 2024 to see the King Kamehameha Day Parade "one last time" as she put it, as traveling was getting to be just too difficult for her.
Vyolet is dearly missed by her family and friends, all whose lives she touched. We send her our love and aloha.
A celebration of Vyolet’s life will be held on August 9, 2024, 11am-2pm, at Fernwood Cemetery, 301 Tennessee Valley Road, Mill Valley, Ca.
There will be a Zoom recording starting at 11am,
Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/2526248888?pwd=rrOR7z2wQikGmhwaWGZbHPkVW9z5q5.1&omn=83215295288
Passcode: 315315
In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Vyolet Chu’s name to your favorite charity or to The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco or The American Cancer Society.
Eric Thor Churchwell
Celebration of Life
July 27th, 2024 at 1:30pm Sharp Park Golf Course in Pacifica, CA
Today, and every day moving forward, we will celebrate the life of our brother, an all-around kindly loyal soul, Eric Thor Churchwell. A longtime resident and beloved member of the Westborough community, who departed on June 22, 2024, at the young age of 51 in South San Francisco, California.
Eric was born on March 15, 1973, to his loving parents, Dr. Caesar and Ruth Churchwell in San Francisco, California.
Beginning at a young age, and throughout his high school, and college years, “E. Church” was known as an outstanding athlete. Energetically playing basketball, football, baseball, and running track. As an adult, “Uncle Bubble” loved watching the youth play sports. He was continuously cheering on the sidelines with a big warm smile on his face.
In his early adult life, “Loc” travelled to Texas and lived there for several years. In the year 2000 he met Iselle Correa, and together in 2003, they had the astounding Caesar Jahmal Churchwell, the light of Eric’s life.
“Bubble” was a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan and a die-hard 76ers fan. The love of his favored teams would often have him in several spirited debates with friends and especially his crew. Eric brought immense joy and happiness to everyone around him. His charming smile and infectious laugh will be deeply missed.
Eric is preceded in death by his father, Dr. Churchwell, his mother, Ruth, and his brother, Budd.
Our brother is survived by his son Caesar, sister Gabrielle, brother Jonathan, nephew Jason, and a host of nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends.
Eric’s Earthly presence was genuinely felt by all who were fortunate to have known him. His spirit will live on in the memories we hold dear.
Rest Peacefully in Paradise Eric Thor Churchwell
A celebration of life will be held at
Sharp Park Golf Course in Pacifica, CA
July 27th, 2024 at 1:30pm
Barbara Anne Ferst
April 3,1934 - June 23, 2024
Barbara Anne Ferst passed away in her home in Larkspur, California on Sunday June 23rd, 2024 surrounded by her family and loved ones. Barbara is survived by her five children Kathleen Sell (Paul), Susan Berger (Don), Stephen Ferst, Daniel Ferst (Daphne), David Ferst (Melissa), and her ten grandchildren. She had been battling chronic physical pain from a back operation twenty years earlier. Despite her constant pain, she remained a loyal and caring mother and grandmother – she will be sorely missed.
Barbara, or Bobbie as we endearingly called her, was born in Long Island, New York on April 3, 1934. She attended Hofstra University and immediately began a career with Time and Life Magazine in New York City.
While working for Time and Life she met our father Richard Edward Ferst. This would be the beginning of a sixty-two-year marriage which yielded six children and a fascinating life in six countries—Havana, Cuba; Caracas, Venezuela; Mexico City, Mexico; Los Gatos, California; São Paulo, Brazil; and Toronto, Canada before retiring to Los Gatos in 1985 with Richard. It is safe to say that if two people were meant to be together it would be our parents. Their love was strong and abiding.
Barbara was a loving, happy and devoted wife and mother. She was also an avid tennis player throughout her life, a successful real estate agent, talented bridge player, and an excellent hostess to our father’s overseas business and social engagements. Bobbie was always positive and supportive of our father and her children. When assigned to a foreign post, she quickly immersed herself in the new culture creating a comfortable home for her family where they could feel safe and thrive in their new environment.
While she struggled the last twenty years of her life, she maintained a positive outlook and was there for her five surviving children and ten grandchildren in the best possible way she could. She loved her family and would do anything for them. She will be greatly missed by all of us, and the friends she accumulated in her travels abroad.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to one of her favorite organizations, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation by clicking on the Donate Now button on www.t2t.org and clicking the “Dedicate donation in memory of” box and entering her name. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] in memory of her, or contact the organization at 718-987-1931 to make your donation by phone.
Service and interment will be held in Los Gatos, California where she will be buried next to Richard, her husband, and loyal companion of sixty-two years.
Elsie Schiff Yeager
December 23, 1927 – June 11, 2024
Elsie Yeager of Walnut Creek, CA passed away peacefully and with dignity on June 11 in her Rossmoor home. She was 96 years old and remained fiercely independent throughout her final days. Born and raised in Montreal to a family of Jewish immigrants who emigrated to Canada from Poland, Elsie excelled at school and had a passion for classical music She loved playing the piano from an early age and studied the instrument seriously into young adulthood, taught piano for a few years, and then played for her own enjoyment for most of her life.
In 1950, Elsie Schiff married Jack Yeager after meeting him while taking lessons from the same piano teacher. The couple shared their love of music and their lives for the next 63 years. When her only son, Mark, was born, Elsie devoted herself to being an exceptionally devoted mother and meticulous homemaker and took pride in maintaining a spotless home and becoming an extraordinary cook and baker, preparing delicious meals and baked goods for which she was renowned.
After 40 years in Montreal, Elsie, Jack, and Mark moved to Boston where Jack accepted a managerial position with the Gillette Company. In 1970 they settled in the town of Dover, southwest of Boston, where Elsie and Jack enjoyed small-town life and the pastoral countryside for the next 43 years. In 2013 when declining health made it too difficult to maintain the Dover home, Elsie and Jack moved to a new condo in the nearby Boston suburb of Natick. Elsie was instrumental in advocating for this change and finally convinced Jack, after years of perseverance, that downsizing to a one-level condo was a necessity. Elsie loved the ease of condo living but unfortunately Jack’s failing health led to his passing away 9 months later. Faced with an exceedingly difficult life choice, Elsie agreed (after being persuaded by her son) that she should relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area to be close to Mark and his spouse, Tim.
In December 2014, Elsie moved into a newly renovated condo in the Rossmoor community in Walnut Creek. At age 86 she adapted well to her new California life, loving the mild weather, enjoying attending concerts and exploring new cuisine in the Bay Area’s fine restaurants for several years until chronic pain severely limited her mobility. Despite many health challenges, she remained determined to live independently, which was made possible by her son's care, and the additional assistance of dedicated outside caregivers in her final months.
Elsie was predeceased by her husband Jack Yeager, her brother Harry Schiff and is survived by her son Mark Yeager, son-in-law Tim Blevins, nephew Jack Yeager, niece Linda Schiff and their respective families. A celebration of her life will be held at Fernwood Cemetery in Mill Valley on June 27 at 2:30 pm. She will also be remembered at a private reception at the home of her cousin in Wellesley Massachusetts on July 12.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Elsie’s honor to the Music at Menlo Chamber Music Festival and Institute. Click the below link to donate.
https://musicatmenlo.my.salesforce-sites.com/donate/?dfId=a0nHr000007zatfIAA
Remembering Maryanne Kayiatos
Thursday, June 6th, 2024 1pm-2pm
Dear friends and family,
It brings me great sadness to announce the passing of my one-of-a-kind aunt—one of the all-time greats—Mary Anne Kayiatos.
She fought like hell for the rich, full, aesthete’s existence she’d made for herself, and remained active, on her phone and on her feet, dressed up, decked out, with full makeup and Big Apple—red manicure, digging in the garden dirt down to her last days on earth. Concluding a ferocious four-year fight with cancer, she died at home, surrounded by loved ones and caregivers in her beautifully appointed Van Ness apartment, on the evening of Thursday, May 30, 2024.
Mary Anne was a tough old broad, as she liked to say, with a New York—specific grit that never got washed away. Born in Brooklyn in the nineteen forties, she made her way back to Manhattan by the seventies, following a seldom mentioned juvenile stint in Jersey City. Perhaps because her formative years—bridge and tunnel be damned!—afforded her a three-sixty view of the Statue of Liberty, Mary Anne was destined from the get-go to be larger than life.
Pulling herself up by the bootstraps, she put herself through business school at Baruch College and became a real-life Mad (Wo)Man: a lady Don Draper with closely cropped burgundy curls, big Linda Carter—glasses, and a dirty martini, extra dry, three olives on the side.
It was at this time, as she soared to the top of her mostly male profession, that she began getting down after hours with the bustling downtown art scene. Once it started, her love affair with art proved infinite and intricate: over time she would be an artist’s darling, a muse, a patron, a student, an expert, a collector, and an admirer—often many things at once. But Mary Anne and art, like Mary Anne Anne and Manhattan, should never be thought apart from each other.
Indeed, her big, bedazzled heart pumped and bumped to the rhythm of New York—even after she relocated to a shaky San Francisco in 1989, in order to be nearby her younger brother John and his family. She wrapped her impressive advertising career up with a bow in the Bay Area and enjoyed an early retirement, in which she brought her East Coast—borne interest in art out west by volunteering as a docent for the young at multiple museums (SF MoMA, the DeYoung, the Museum of Asian Art), as well as the Strybing Arboretum. Inspired by the comparative spaciousness of her new state, Mary Anne cultivated a passion for gardening in the plot she maintained for thirty years at the Fort Mason Community Garden. She won awards for her roses and earned a reputation as an aficionado of flowers and a flower floozy.
Much like her many closets, Mary Anne’s life was absolutely stuffed to the brim with her favorite things: fine art, good food, fun times, fascinating people. She was a true lover of pleasure and a grower of beauty, whose greatest masterpiece was her life itself.
Mary Anne is survived by her niece, Anastasia Kayiatos; her nephew, Rocco Kayiatos-Smith, and his wife, Tricia; and her sister-in-law, Diana Kayiatos. Although a confirmed bachelorette with no children of her own, Mary Anne was indeed everybody’s fabulous Auntie Mame, and she will be missed by the countless “nieces,””nephews,” and friends she found both near and far over her glorious eighty-three years.
Thank you for adding something special to my Auntie Mary Anne’s life and keeping her memory sparkling and vital.
With appreciation,
Anastasia Kayiatos
