Susan Soares Obituary

Susan Engelhard Soares Born May 10, 1927 in Chicago, Susan grew up in Winnetka, Illinois. After graduation from New Trier High School, she came out to California to attend Stanford University. It was there she met Joseph L. Soares who was a pre-law student. They were married in July 1949 at her parent's home and moved to Tulare in 1953, at the invitation of Judge Ward G. Rush. Susan entered eternal life in Santa Rosa on April 11, 2014. Susan brought the good heart, good mind and good cheer of her family as she made her life in Tulare, raising her four children and somehow finding time to sustain her significant interests as her husband's law practice grew. She was part of the Great Books group that met for years, she attended art classes at College of Sequoias and created numerous works that are found often amongst her family now. She was an avid musician, playing her viola in small groups or with the Tulare County Symphony Orchestra, of which she was a founding member. Susan was a regular and active member of the Congregational Church in Tulare as she had been in Illinois and Palo Alto. Very well read and having a broad social conscience, Susan volunteered her time in the service of organizations as varied as the PTA and the NAACP. She was also a Cub Scout den mother and a frequent polling place worker during elections. She could knit or crochet deftly while keeping an eye on visitors, her cats, birds or aquarium fish. Who knew the boundaries of her interests? After her children were grown-up and gone, Susan returned to school and earned a teaching credential that led to a career of about twenty years in Tulare County. Upon retiring from teaching, she somehow convinced the skeptics to overlook her age and enlisted in the Peace Corps for two years in the Kingdom of Swaziland, and then extended for a rare third year in the mid-1990's. Her daughter visited her in Swaziland. At the age of 80, Susan also spent a week in New Orleans performing physical labor with post-Katrina clean up. Within a little over a decade after Susan's marriage, her parents and sisters with their families had settled in southern California, and so did Susan after her Peace Corps work. She lived in Riverside until 2012 when she moved to Santa Rosa. Susan is survived by her sister Mary Engelhard Lien of Vista, three of her four children: Todd (Santa Rosa) Darrow (La Habra) and Marian (Tulare), eight grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. A gathering in her memory will be held at Riverside's Mission Inn on Saturday, May 10 at 11:00 a.m.