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Susan M. Getzendanner: Business and Buddhism

 

One does not often encounter a practical business person who is a spiritual seeker, but this was Susan M. Getzendanner. She was a vice president at Fiduciary Trust, but she also trekked all over the world, including the Himalayas, and was a serious student of Buddhism.

"I think it was the all-inclusiveness of it and the spirituality of Buddhism," said Fiona Fein, a longtime friend. "She had meetings with various Buddhist sages whom she found to be enormously spiritually powerful people. They were interested in something she wanted."

Ms. Getzendanner, 58, had a great grin, and silver-gray hair that she never dyed. She lived on the Upper East Side and worked behind the scenes for the Blue Hill Troupe, an amateur group of Gilbert and Sullivan players. On weekends, she went to her cottage at the foot of Mount Riga in Connecticut, which, like her apartment, was filled with handicrafts and art from her travels. Her brother Tom Getzendanner lamented the fact that a woman who spent her life traveling foreign lands and trusting others was killed in an act of international terrorism.

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times