Susan Mary Sanders
Susan Mary Sanders, age 77, died on August 7, 2024, after a seven-year battle with cancer of the lungs, brain, and spine. She was born in Hanover, NH on May 19, 1947, to Frank and Beth Lawlor. She grew up in Amesbury, MA as the oldest of seven children supported by her father’s meager salary as the Amesbury High School Music teacher. She graduated third in her class from Amesbury High School in 1965. She attended Smith College on a scholarship majoring in English and graduated magna cum laude from Smith in 1969.
She served as Small Business Librarian at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, while sharing an apartment on Bay State Road with a couple of other Smith friends. She met John Sanders on a blind date that August as he was about to leave for a tour in Vietnam. They corresponded while he was overseas and continued dating after he returned to the U.S. in August 1970. They were married on August 7th, 1971, and honeymooned on a Victorian houseboat on Dal Lake next to the city of Srinagar in the Vale of Kashmir in northernmost India, taking side trips to some of the surrounding Himalaya hill stations as well as trips to New Delhi and the Taj Mahal in Agra. After John left the Army, they took a two-month trip across the US in a VW Camper. Then they moved to Troy, NY where Susan worked at the Russell Sage College Library to support John as he continued his graduate studies at RPI. They moved to Merrimack, NH, where their son, Michael was born in 1975. Shortly afterward, they moved to Mount Prospect, IL, where their daughter, Ellen, was born in 1978. After moving back to Nashua, NH, their daughter, Katherine was born in 1980.
Sue remained a stay-at-home mom until all the children had reached school age because, “I don’t want somebody else raising my children.” Then she earned an MBA in Accounting from Southern NH University and passed all three parts of the CPA exams the first time she took them. She then worked as a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Valuation Analyst for several decades at Melanson Heath PC in Nashua.
She served on the board of United Way in Nashua for 10 years and also on the board of the NH Small Business Development Center in Durham, NH where she taught several workshops on starting a business to new entrepreneurs. For several years, she published a weekly article in the Nashua Telegraph about the stocks of companies local to the Nashua area.
Once the last college tuition payment for their children had been made, Susan and John began making yearly one-week vacation trips to either France, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, or Argentina.
When asked for her greatest accomplishments, she said they were her marriage and her children.
Susan is survived by her husband John Sanders of Nashua; her son Michael Sanders of Nashua; her daughter and son-in-law, Ellen and Tyler Cooper, and her grandchildren Paige and Noah Cooper, all of Gilbert, AZ; her daughter and son-in-law, Katherine and Adam Pingel, and her grandchildren Jack and Lily Pingel, all of Raleigh, NC; her sister Betty Paszko of Haverhill, MA; her sister Mary Lawlor of Marina Del Rey, CA; her sister and brother-in-law, Ann and Ron Burek, of North Andover, MA; her brother and sister-in-law, Edward and Elizabeth Lawlor of Chicago, IL; her brother and sister-in-law, John Lawlor and Katherine Blake of Lowell, MA; her sister and brother-in-law, Joan and Steve O’Leary of Hopkinton, MA; her in-laws, Dottie and Paul Lacy of Topsham, ME, her in-laws Bill (Sil) and Anne Sanders of Stanwood, WA; her in-laws, Donnie and Danny Kelley of Wilton, NH; her in-laws, Wade and Renee Sanders of Long Beach, CA. her in-laws, Jill and Justin Smith of Holden, MA; and many nieces, nephews and cousins.
Services will be held at Davis Funeral Home, 1 Lock Street, Nashua, NH at 1:00 PM on Thursday, August 15, followed by a reception across the street at First Church Congregational UCC, 1 Concord Street, Nashua, NH. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to the United Way of Nashua.