Eulogy for Susan Gayle
Sanders Dishman
August 30, 1943 - July 28, 2003

Written by her husband, John Dishman, and delivered by her longtime friend, Wayne Bowman
at her funeral on August 1, 2003

Susan Dishman entered into eternal glory at 12:14 PM on July 28. Her almost 60 years of life, and especially her 38 month battle with ovarian cancer, are summarized by her favorite verse of scripture, Romans 8:28: "And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, to those who are called according to his purpose." Her life was hallmarked by her deep love for the Lord, and by her commitment to obey His command to love others as herself. Indeed, those who knew her well found that her love for them greatly exceeded any self love, as she sought not to be served, but to serve others with excellence. Even in the darkest days of her last illness, she never doubted God's working for her good. As her body faded away at the end of her life, those close to her saw her spirit grow mightily.

Susan was born on August 30, 1943 in Oklahoma City to Elwood Davis Sanders and Helen Ethel Kindblade Sanders. Her father, who was a flight instructor in the Army Aircorps at the time, went AWOL in order to be present at her birth. Susan's childhood was marked by the impact of her father's great success in the business world. His entire career was spent at F. W. Woolworth Company, where he received a succession of promotions that took him from stocking clerk to regional vice president in a span of 40 years. These promotions almost always entailed a move to a new city, including Dallas, Jackson Mississippi, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Short Hills New Jersey. Thus, Susan and her younger sister Shari, found themselves frequently being the "new kid in class," with all the traumatic adjustment that required. This produced in Susan a twinge of shyness when it came to participating in groups, which lent a fascinating air of mystery to her otherwise outgoing personality.

In 1960 the Sanders family moved to Short Hills, New Jersey, as a result of Elwood's promotion to Woolworth's headquarters in Manhattan. Once again Susan was faced with being the new girl in class in her senior year at the highly competitive Millburn High School. She overcame this challenge, and in a foretaste of what was to come, she won the Betty Crocker award in home economics. That year in New Jersey was significant in an even more important way. A friend and classmate, Barbara Locke, shared her faith in Jesus Christ and invited Susan to receive Him as her Lord and Savior. This Susan did, and thus commenced her walk with Christ that was to become the core of her being for the rest of her life. As a result of her conversion Susan joined the Maplewood Gospel Chapel and became a part of the Plymouth Brethren congregation, a rather substantial departure from her childhood experiences as a member of Disciples of Christ churches.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was to become Susan's next place of residence as she entered Carnegie Institute of Technology as a Home Economics major in the Fall of 1961. She continued attending the local Plymouth Brethren congregation, where custom dictated that all women should wear hats to church. Susan often made her own hats, which were always done in the elegance and stylishness that came to be associated with her mode of dress throughout life. Susan also joined the campus InterVarsity Christian Fellowship group which was to lead to a pivotal meeting in her Sophomore year. In September, 1962, at the first IV meeting of the year, she spotted a graduate student named John, who had just arrived from Georgia Tech and who was beginning his work towards a Ph.D. in physics. Susan said that the very first time she saw him, and heard him speak in his Southern accent, she knew deep down in her heart that she would marry him someday. It took John quite a bit longer to figure this out-which was a foretaste of how things would be for the next 41 years of their relationship. Susan, with her Home Ec. degree would always be 2 steps ahead of John with his physics doctorate when it came to things practical and important. The wonderful thing was that he never knew! In her subtle and loving way she always guided him to the right answer and made him believe that he was the one who had at last figured it all out.

This meeting led to a 3-year courtship while both Susan and John continued their studies at the now renamed Carnegie Mellon University. Susan graduated there in 1965 with a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics. Prior to graduation the faculty awarded her a scholarship to the prestigious Merrill Palmer Institute for Child and Family Development in Detroit, where she studied for one semester in her senior year.

During their time together in Pittsburgh, Susan was persuaded by John to join him as a member of First Presbyterian Church. This marked the beginning her understanding of the great scriptural truths developed in the Presbyterian system of doctrine, especially the sovereignty of God and His covenantal promises to His people, which were to become very precious to her.

On July 10, 1965, Susan and John were wed at the Webster Groves Christian Church, in a suburb of St. Louis. Originally the couple intended to be married at First Presbyterian in Pittsburgh, but again Elwood suddenly received yet another promotion-this time to be Assistant Vice President of the Southwestern Region of Woolworth which was headquartered in St. Louis. After the wedding they continued to live in Pittsburgh-on Elwood Street-while John finished his dissertation, and Susan began her first teaching job as a Home Ec. instructor in a local high school.

In July 1967 John joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill New Jersey, the beginning of a 28 year career with AT&T. Susan and John set out a target date of 5 years when they expected to leave the Northeast and return to the South they both loved. Twenty-two years later, they finally realized their dream when they built a house on Amesbury Drive in Plano. In the intervening time Susan retired from her teaching career and became the mother of three boys: David born in 1970, Mark born in 1973 and Peter born in 1974. She met the challenge of three highly active boys 3 and under by becoming a most excellent mother. She also became an expert in ADD and dyslexia as she ministered to the special needs of two of her boys. So well regarded did she become by the experts in New York City, where she traveled with the boys each week for therapy, that she was asked to be interviewed along with another parent on the local TV station WOR. The tape of that broadcast shows our somewhat shy Susan speaking in that wonderful soft voice, blinking those big brown eyes, and slowly taking over the interview! Her words were so precise, her knowledge of the subject so deep and her loving personality so obvious that the interviewer could not resist her. And of course, neither could we.

Time does not permit us to dwell on all the events of those 22 years in New Jersey. The family became members of Emmanuel Church, a small congregation in the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination. There, because of the special needs of her own children, she co-founded along with her friend Ann Tinnette Kapp, Emmanuel Christian school. She served as assistant principal and teacher, and her son Mark was its first graduate. She also was the ultimate hostess, particularly for the weekly Bible studies led by John in their home on Harwich Road in Morris Township.

In 1990, after the family's move to Texas, Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 46, shortly after her own mother was found to have the same disease. After surgery and chemo, Susan was apparently cured, even as her mother, Helen, worsened. Susan became the major caregiver of her mother for 6 months until Helen's death in May, 1993. In that same year, with the 3 boys out of the nest she felt the call to become a certified academic language therapist. After taking the necessary courses and qualifying exams, she set up her own private practice in her home. Of all her teaching jobs, this brought the most satisfaction to Susan. She had an outstanding capability in language therapy, and she found her highly challenged students steadily progressing under her tutelage. One mother recently remarked that Susan was her daughter's angel-that no one else had the impact on her daughter's life like Susan did, not just in her teaching but as the loving caring person she always was.

In May, 2000, Susan was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Later genetic tests would show that her breast and ovarian cancers were made more likely because of a single missing letter-the letter A-in a portion of her DNA. Susan never played the "what if" game about her genetic defect-what if we had known sooner and had done something about it. Rather, she turned to Psalm 139, to that verse that reads:

My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there were none of them.

Whenever anyone would ask about her disease and her treatment, should would respond, "we know Who is in charge, and His plan is perfect." She maintained this attitude throughout 3 surgeries, 6 chemotherapies, the loss of hair, and the weakness and side effects that they all produced. Never did we hear her complain about her own comfort, only the words, "I'm sorry I'm dragging you through all this."

But Susan herself would not want us to dwell too much on her illness and her sufferings. She would be happy to know that we recalled some lighter moments of her life. For example, her reputation as a super-shopper and bargainer. She was so good at this that her family gave her a shirt that warned on its front: "this is no ordinary person you are dealing with." On one occasion, a man she had bargained down to practically nothing turned to her son standing near by and said, "Is you mother Jewish?"

Even in the last weeks of life she continued to maintain her sense of humor. After a particularly sobering discussion with the family about the need to enter the hospice program, she sat quietly for a moment, and then turned to Peter, who had a particularly pained look on his face. "Peter," she said, "if I've told you once I've told you a hundred times, don't play poker for money. You'll lose it all." That was just what was needed to break the tension and indicate her acceptance of what was next.

There are so many things that will forever endear Susan to our memories: her physical beauty, her elegance in dress and poise that led many to compare her with Audrey Hepburn, her incredible intuition that led her family to name her "the oracle," her penetrating gaze captured in a recent photograph that seems to peer into the viewer's soul. But most of all we will remember her prayers. One evening about a month ago several family members sat around Susan's kitchen table for family devotions. The passage read was Revelation 4, which describes the heavenly throne room with the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures. The passage is so full of the glories of God that it seems that the human author John can't fully find words to express what he saw. After the usual theological and hermeneutical discussion that characterizes the Dishman men, Susan was asked to pray. Thereupon she poured out her heart in the most beautiful and powerful prayer that seemed to emanate from the throne room itself. Each sentence she spoke was in praise of the Lord Almighty: as our creator, as our redeemer, as the Sovereign Lord who works all things to His glory and our good, as the Loving Savior who gives his life for our lives. Then she proceeded to pray for each family member one by one, interceding for each at just their place of need, and finally ending with the prayer that all her generations would know and receive the blessing of the covenant as she herself was blessed.

We have no doubt that on this very day she now stands at the threshold of that heavenly throne room, viewing in person the twenty-four elders and the 4 living creatures and the Lamb upon the throne. She now knows as she was fully known, and is receiving from Jesus those words she had always longed to hear: "well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord." Hallelujah!