January 24, 2011 Susan Knowles, beloved mother, grandmother, teacher and friend, passed away last Friday at the age of 71.
She was born in New York City to the uniquely complementary couple of Frank and Irene Kearns in 1939. Frank was a newspaper reporter and editor from a working-class Irish Catholic background, while Irene was a teacher and a Mormon from the pioneer prairies of Wyoming and Utah. They had met by chance in 1933 in Chicago, where Frank's paper had just gone out of business in the Depression, and where Irene, a university student, had gone to visit the World's Fair. After a two-day courtship, Frank proposed and they were married a year later in Irene's parents' home in Logan, Utah. They settled in Frank's native New York, where he had found more work.
It was Irene who raised young Susan Kearns in the LDS faith, while insisting on the toughest, most rigorous Christian education available-at the Catholic Academy of Mt. St. Ursula High School, in the Bronx. Susan, who later earned bachelor's and master's degrees, always told friends and family of her four years with the strict Ursuline nuns teaching religion, math, science, social studies, English, Latin, and French: "I worked harder there than anywhere, before or since."
Growing up in New York, she developed a passion for theater and music, and, like her father, became a consummate storyteller, always with a terrific yarn to share with friends, family, or indeed complete strangers on airplanes. She was also never without a paperback handy, and this cheerfully spiritual, generous and kind woman also reveled in a particular fondness for literature in the mystery/crime genre--the more gruesome the better.
In 1960 while a student at Brigham Young University, Susan married William Knowles, a broadcast journalist, in the Los Angeles LDS temple. Over the course of the next 30 years, William's career would take the couple's growing family around the country, from Salt Lake City to Chicago to Atlanta to Washington and back again to Los Angeles. As an only child, Susan had always wanted a large family, and her five children with William were her pride and joy: James Francis (b. 1961), Irene Susan (b. 1964), Daniel Leroy (b. 1967), Joseph William (b. 1973), and Edward Kearns (b. 1977).
To her sorrow, her marriage with William ended in divorce in 1990 after a lengthy separation. Yet this sad transition also triggered a new career that touched countless lives in the Santa Clarita Valley, where she settled with her children in 1987. She had been a school teacher and education consultant on and off over the years, and armed with a master's degree in psychology from George Mason University and a teaching credential from California State University Northridge, she embarked on a career as a special education teacher. She loved her work and her students intensely, becoming a pillar of the local special ed community. Her family remains in awe of the strangers who have stepped forward in the short time since her death, expressing their enduring gratitude for how she cared for, taught and guided their children.
She lived long enough to become a grandmother ten times over, a development in her final years that supplied her with a well of endless joy. She doted upon each grandchild tirelessly, taking an active role in their educational and extracurricular aspirations, always an eager spectator and supporter in an ongoing parade of dance recitals, plays, baseball and soccer games, literary papers, science presentations, history projects, and just about everything else that came their-and therefore her-way.
To her grandchildren, children, colleagues, students and friends, she was a giant presence, full of color, energy and positivity--running around her beloved New York City and going to Broadway shows with her family only two months ago at Thanksgiving. Barely half a week before her sudden passing, she had taken her oldest grandchild, Macy Grace Smolsky, 15, to see Hair at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. The pair loved it.
Her children were surprised to discover upon her death that she had also somehow found time to quietly work on a memoir of her extraordinary life, full of anecdotes and home truths that bring us solace amid our current pain. Her large family-her lasting legacy-is in a state of shock and profound sadness. But, as she writes to us from beyond the grave: "Depression, while sometimes unavoidable, is eventually boring. The best advice I ever heard to combat it is to do something nice for someone else every day, and something nice for yourself just as often."
We will be celebrating her beautiful life in a memorial service for her on Tuesday, January 25, at 2:00 p.m. at the LDS Church, Peachland Chapel, at 24915 Peachland Avenue, Newhall, Calif. She will be interred later beside her parents at a private service in Logan, Utah. All are welcomed. Published in Santa Clarita Valley Signal on January 25, 2011
She was born in New York City to the uniquely complementary couple of Frank and Irene Kearns in 1939. Frank was a newspaper reporter and editor from a working-class Irish Catholic background, while Irene was a teacher and a Mormon from the pioneer prairies of Wyoming and Utah. They had met by chance in 1933 in Chicago, where Frank's paper had just gone out of business in the Depression, and where Irene, a university student, had gone to visit the World's Fair. After a two-day courtship, Frank proposed and they were married a year later in Irene's parents' home in Logan, Utah. They settled in Frank's native New York, where he had found more work.
It was Irene who raised young Susan Kearns in the LDS faith, while insisting on the toughest, most rigorous Christian education available-at the Catholic Academy of Mt. St. Ursula High School, in the Bronx. Susan, who later earned bachelor's and master's degrees, always told friends and family of her four years with the strict Ursuline nuns teaching religion, math, science, social studies, English, Latin, and French: "I worked harder there than anywhere, before or since."
Growing up in New York, she developed a passion for theater and music, and, like her father, became a consummate storyteller, always with a terrific yarn to share with friends, family, or indeed complete strangers on airplanes. She was also never without a paperback handy, and this cheerfully spiritual, generous and kind woman also reveled in a particular fondness for literature in the mystery/crime genre--the more gruesome the better.
In 1960 while a student at Brigham Young University, Susan married William Knowles, a broadcast journalist, in the Los Angeles LDS temple. Over the course of the next 30 years, William's career would take the couple's growing family around the country, from Salt Lake City to Chicago to Atlanta to Washington and back again to Los Angeles. As an only child, Susan had always wanted a large family, and her five children with William were her pride and joy: James Francis (b. 1961), Irene Susan (b. 1964), Daniel Leroy (b. 1967), Joseph William (b. 1973), and Edward Kearns (b. 1977).
To her sorrow, her marriage with William ended in divorce in 1990 after a lengthy separation. Yet this sad transition also triggered a new career that touched countless lives in the Santa Clarita Valley, where she settled with her children in 1987. She had been a school teacher and education consultant on and off over the years, and armed with a master's degree in psychology from George Mason University and a teaching credential from California State University Northridge, she embarked on a career as a special education teacher. She loved her work and her students intensely, becoming a pillar of the local special ed community. Her family remains in awe of the strangers who have stepped forward in the short time since her death, expressing their enduring gratitude for how she cared for, taught and guided their children.
She lived long enough to become a grandmother ten times over, a development in her final years that supplied her with a well of endless joy. She doted upon each grandchild tirelessly, taking an active role in their educational and extracurricular aspirations, always an eager spectator and supporter in an ongoing parade of dance recitals, plays, baseball and soccer games, literary papers, science presentations, history projects, and just about everything else that came their-and therefore her-way.
To her grandchildren, children, colleagues, students and friends, she was a giant presence, full of color, energy and positivity--running around her beloved New York City and going to Broadway shows with her family only two months ago at Thanksgiving. Barely half a week before her sudden passing, she had taken her oldest grandchild, Macy Grace Smolsky, 15, to see Hair at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. The pair loved it.
Her children were surprised to discover upon her death that she had also somehow found time to quietly work on a memoir of her extraordinary life, full of anecdotes and home truths that bring us solace amid our current pain. Her large family-her lasting legacy-is in a state of shock and profound sadness. But, as she writes to us from beyond the grave: "Depression, while sometimes unavoidable, is eventually boring. The best advice I ever heard to combat it is to do something nice for someone else every day, and something nice for yourself just as often."
We will be celebrating her beautiful life in a memorial service for her on Tuesday, January 25, at 2:00 p.m. at the LDS Church, Peachland Chapel, at 24915 Peachland Avenue, Newhall, Calif. She will be interred later beside her parents at a private service in Logan, Utah. All are welcomed. Published in Santa Clarita Valley Signal on January 25, 2011
January 24, 2011 Susan Knowles, beloved mother, grandmother, teacher and friend, passed away last Friday at the age of 71.
She was born in New York City to the uniquely complementary couple of Frank and Irene Kearns in 1939. Frank was a newspaper reporter and editor from a working-class Irish Catholic background, while Irene was a teacher and a Mormon from the pioneer prairies of Wyoming and Utah. They had met by chance in 1933 in Chicago, where Frank's paper had just gone out of business in the Depression, and where Irene, a university student, had gone to visit the World's Fair. After a two-day courtship, Frank proposed and they were married a year later in Irene's parents' home in Logan, Utah. They settled in Frank's native New York, where he had found more work.
It was Irene who raised young Susan Kearns in the LDS faith, while insisting on the toughest, most rigorous Christian education available-at the Catholic Academy of Mt. St. Ursula High School, in the Bronx. Susan, who later earned bachelor's and master's degrees, always told friends and family of her four years with the strict Ursuline nuns teaching religion, math, science, social studies, English, Latin, and French: "I worked harder there than anywhere, before or since."
Growing up in New York, she developed a passion for theater and music, and, like her father, became a consummate storyteller, always with a terrific yarn to share with friends, family, or indeed complete strangers on airplanes. She was also never without a paperback handy, and this cheerfully spiritual, generous and kind woman also reveled in a particular fondness for literature in the mystery/crime genre--the more gruesome the better.
In 1960 while a student at Brigham Young University, Susan married William Knowles, a broadcast journalist, in the Los Angeles LDS temple. Over the course of the next 30 years, William's career would take the couple's growing family around the country, from Salt Lake City to Chicago to Atlanta to Washington and back again to Los Angeles. As an only child, Susan had always wanted a large family, and her five children with William were her pride and joy: James Francis (b. 1961), Irene Susan (b. 1964), Daniel Leroy (b. 1967), Joseph William (b. 1973), and Edward Kearns (b. 1977).
To her sorrow, her marriage with William ended in divorce in 1990 after a lengthy separation. Yet this sad transition also triggered a new career that touched countless lives in the Santa Clarita Valley, where she settled with her children in 1987. She had been a school teacher and education consultant on and off over the years, and armed with a master's degree in psychology from George Mason University and a teaching credential from California State University Northridge, she embarked on a career as a special education teacher. She loved her work and her students intensely, becoming a pillar of the local special ed community. Her family remains in awe of the strangers who have stepped forward in the short time since her death, expressing their enduring gratitude for how she cared for, taught and guided their children.
She lived long enough to become a grandmother ten times over, a development in her final years that supplied her with a well of endless joy. She doted upon each grandchild tirelessly, taking an active role in their educational and extracurricular aspirations, always an eager spectator and supporter in an ongoing parade of dance recitals, plays, baseball and soccer games, literary papers, science presentations, history projects, and just about everything else that came their-and therefore her-way.
To her grandchildren, children, colleagues, students and friends, she was a giant presence, full of color, energy and positivity--running around her beloved New York City and going to Broadway shows with her family only two months ago at Thanksgiving. Barely half a week before her sudden passing, she had taken her oldest grandchild, Macy Grace Smolsky, 15, to see Hair at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. The pair loved it.
Her children were surprised to discover upon her death that she had also somehow found time to quietly work on a memoir of her extraordinary life, full of anecdotes and home truths that bring us solace amid our current pain. Her large family-her lasting legacy-is in a state of shock and profound sadness. But, as she writes to us from beyond the grave: "Depression, while sometimes unavoidable, is eventually boring. The best advice I ever heard to combat it is to do something nice for someone else every day, and something nice for yourself just as often."
We will be celebrating her beautiful life in a memorial service for her on Tuesday, January 25, at 2:00 p.m. at the LDS Church, Peachland Chapel, at 24915 Peachland Avenue, Newhall, Calif. She will be interred later beside her parents at a private service in Logan, Utah. All are welcomed. Published in Santa Clarita Valley Signal on January 25, 2011
She was born in New York City to the uniquely complementary couple of Frank and Irene Kearns in 1939. Frank was a newspaper reporter and editor from a working-class Irish Catholic background, while Irene was a teacher and a Mormon from the pioneer prairies of Wyoming and Utah. They had met by chance in 1933 in Chicago, where Frank's paper had just gone out of business in the Depression, and where Irene, a university student, had gone to visit the World's Fair. After a two-day courtship, Frank proposed and they were married a year later in Irene's parents' home in Logan, Utah. They settled in Frank's native New York, where he had found more work.
It was Irene who raised young Susan Kearns in the LDS faith, while insisting on the toughest, most rigorous Christian education available-at the Catholic Academy of Mt. St. Ursula High School, in the Bronx. Susan, who later earned bachelor's and master's degrees, always told friends and family of her four years with the strict Ursuline nuns teaching religion, math, science, social studies, English, Latin, and French: "I worked harder there than anywhere, before or since."
Growing up in New York, she developed a passion for theater and music, and, like her father, became a consummate storyteller, always with a terrific yarn to share with friends, family, or indeed complete strangers on airplanes. She was also never without a paperback handy, and this cheerfully spiritual, generous and kind woman also reveled in a particular fondness for literature in the mystery/crime genre--the more gruesome the better.
In 1960 while a student at Brigham Young University, Susan married William Knowles, a broadcast journalist, in the Los Angeles LDS temple. Over the course of the next 30 years, William's career would take the couple's growing family around the country, from Salt Lake City to Chicago to Atlanta to Washington and back again to Los Angeles. As an only child, Susan had always wanted a large family, and her five children with William were her pride and joy: James Francis (b. 1961), Irene Susan (b. 1964), Daniel Leroy (b. 1967), Joseph William (b. 1973), and Edward Kearns (b. 1977).
To her sorrow, her marriage with William ended in divorce in 1990 after a lengthy separation. Yet this sad transition also triggered a new career that touched countless lives in the Santa Clarita Valley, where she settled with her children in 1987. She had been a school teacher and education consultant on and off over the years, and armed with a master's degree in psychology from George Mason University and a teaching credential from California State University Northridge, she embarked on a career as a special education teacher. She loved her work and her students intensely, becoming a pillar of the local special ed community. Her family remains in awe of the strangers who have stepped forward in the short time since her death, expressing their enduring gratitude for how she cared for, taught and guided their children.
She lived long enough to become a grandmother ten times over, a development in her final years that supplied her with a well of endless joy. She doted upon each grandchild tirelessly, taking an active role in their educational and extracurricular aspirations, always an eager spectator and supporter in an ongoing parade of dance recitals, plays, baseball and soccer games, literary papers, science presentations, history projects, and just about everything else that came their-and therefore her-way.
To her grandchildren, children, colleagues, students and friends, she was a giant presence, full of color, energy and positivity--running around her beloved New York City and going to Broadway shows with her family only two months ago at Thanksgiving. Barely half a week before her sudden passing, she had taken her oldest grandchild, Macy Grace Smolsky, 15, to see Hair at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. The pair loved it.
Her children were surprised to discover upon her death that she had also somehow found time to quietly work on a memoir of her extraordinary life, full of anecdotes and home truths that bring us solace amid our current pain. Her large family-her lasting legacy-is in a state of shock and profound sadness. But, as she writes to us from beyond the grave: "Depression, while sometimes unavoidable, is eventually boring. The best advice I ever heard to combat it is to do something nice for someone else every day, and something nice for yourself just as often."
We will be celebrating her beautiful life in a memorial service for her on Tuesday, January 25, at 2:00 p.m. at the LDS Church, Peachland Chapel, at 24915 Peachland Avenue, Newhall, Calif. She will be interred later beside her parents at a private service in Logan, Utah. All are welcomed. Published in Santa Clarita Valley Signal on January 25, 2011
Bio by: Thomas NeVille Tippets
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