Susan Lang Merrill died in March 2010 at the age of 68 at her home in Olympia, WA, after a long illness. Susan was born in 1942 in Albany, NY, daughter of Edward Hill Lang and Mary Stowell Lang, and grew up in Syracuse. After graduating from Cornell University in 1964, she started work toward a PhD thesis in radiation biology and biophysics at the University of Rochester.
While in Rochester, she met Sam Merrill at the Unitarian Church. They quickly found much in common -- their love of nature and hiking in the woods, their outlook on life -- and they were married in 1969. Four years later they moved to Shavertown, PA, where they raised their children, until retiring to the Pacific Northwest in 2004, where their children and grandchildren now live.
Soon after moving to Pennsylvania, Susan and Sam became active in the North Branch Friends Meeting. At one time or another, Susan held nearly every position in the Meeting leadership, including Clerk of Meeting. She and her family attended many gatherings of Friends General Conference, as well of those of Quarterly and Yearly Meetings. During sabbatical years, the family participated in Friends Meetings in State College, PA; New Haven, CT; and in University Friends Meeting in Seattle. Susan published several short writings concerning her spiritual development in Quaker publications, including the journal Friendly Woman and the book Enlivened by the Mystery.
During her life, Susan felt passionately about issues of peace, social justice, and the environment, taking on many leadership roles in organizations to help create positive change. She served as Coordinator of the Wilkes-Barre (PA) Peace Committee and was a lead organizer of the Interfaith Witness for Peace that brought several hundred people to Public Square in Wilkes-Barre to witness against nuclear weapons. Susan helped found and worked as a Co-Administrator of the Interfaith Resource Center for Peace and Justice in Wilkes-Barre -- a group whose work ranged from mediation training and helping area religious groups with education on peace issues to leading vigils on Public Square in opposition to war.
Moving to Olympia six years ago, Susan became active in the Olympia Friends Meeting, as well as the Capitol Land Trust, and served as the Assistant Clerk of the statewide Friends Committee on Washington Public Policy, an organization that advocates for Friends’ testimonies in the state legislature, particularly in the area of criminal justice.
Susan was fascinated with immersing herself in and understanding the natural world. She and her family spent portions of nearly every summer at their family’s cabin located deep in the woods in the Adirondacks. They frequently traveled around the country camping, hiking, and observing their natural surroundings.
A year and a half before her death, and only a couple of months after a hiking trip in the North Cascades, Susan was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The remaining eighteen months of her life was a period of exquisite togetherness, as Susan and Sam did many of the kinds of things they had always done -- continuing the day-to-day work in the organizations of which they have been part, traveling to see friends in California, sight-seeing in New Mexico, returning to their beloved cabin in the Adirondacks, and doing what Susan thought she would not be able to do again -- camping in their tent and light hiking on the Olympic Peninsula.
Susan is survived by her husband of 40 years, Sam Merrill -- a retired mathematics professor -- and their two children: Andrew and Amy Merrill. Andrew, a high school computer science teacher, lives with his wife Cindy and children Amber and Nathan in Portland, OR. Amy, an elementary teacher, lives with her children Lucy and Ella in Seattle, WA.