Eunice Durfee Stark was born on May 17th, 1921 to Carroll and Hazel (Swain) Durfee in Baltimore Maryland where her father taught chemistry at a local college. Grandma says that strangers stopped by the house to see "the pretty baby." The baby grew into a bright eyed little girl who skipped a grade and was fascinated with literature, beauty and the question of what makes a good life. When she was 11, her mother gave birth to a little brother, Roger. Much of Mom's childhood was spent in small town New Hampshire, as her father pursued his mother's ambition of having a minister in the family. After High School, Mom matriculated at the University of New Hampshire, where she pledged a sorority Kappa Delta and earned a Masters in English Lit. After graduation, she joined her mother working at the Hartford, Conneticut library, a city where her father had finally found his calling as the founder and head of the city police crime lab. She was rescued from this drab existance when WWII broke out. Aircraft giant Pratt and Whitney mounted a hiring effort, recruiting young women with offers of training, salary and help finding housing. Mom became a technical chemist, a job she held until 1956. In 1947, her beloved brother Roger was killed fighting the great forest fire that hit Rochester, New Hampshire, where he was attending school ( http://www.reocities.com/powerofz7/1947.html). In 1956, Roger Stark walked into a Great Books seminar and saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Less than a year later, they were married and 10 month after that, their first daughter, Karen, was born. Two years later Dad took a job with Lockheed and moved his growing family to Saratoga, California. There, daughter Robin was born in 1961. In addition to maintaining an orderly house, Mom served with various groups, including the Parent Cooperative Nursery, the Girl Scouts, the Good Government Group, the Saratoga Volunteer Center and the League of Women Voters. Several of these organizations approached her about being President, but she declined because, as Dad put it, she knew it would interfere with her duties as wife and mother. Dad said she did everthing she undertook with competance, and it was true. Mom loved music. She had a good singing voice and could play the piano. One year, she went through all the opera recordings at the public library. She loved dogs and we began going to dog shows even before Jenny the Golden Retriever joined our family in 1972. She also loved gorillas, and regularly contributed to the Gorilla Foundation. She read about art, philosophy and history. In 1995 Robin took Mom on a tour of Europe, a rich experience that helped to round out her proper modern life. In 1989 Mom and Dad moved to Casa de Las Campanas in Rancho Bernardo. This proved to be a wise move, as they received the support and care they needed almost seamlessly as their capacities declined, Mom was able to nurse him through the first stages of senile dementia. Dad died in the Convenient Care Center in 2007. Recent health problems and a fall forced Mom to hire 24 hour care, which allowed her to successfully resist moving out of their apartment until November 2011, when a second fall put her in the hospital. After only a few days in convenient care, she returned to the hospital with pneumonia, where she died in her sleep on November 17th. This was her half birthday, so she lived to be exactly 90 and half. In addition to never going to a nursing home, Mom successfully resisted owning an answering machine or a microwave. She specialized in the rituals of life: greeting Dad at the door every day after work, cooking with home grown vegetables before it was chic, and dressing up whenever she went out (even if just to supermarket). We would like to extend our thanks to the women whose efforts helped her maintain her little rituals almost until the end: Belen, Lourdes, Rose, Terracita and Delfina. Thank you for taking the time to read about our beloved mother. - Karen Scott and Robin Stark