Susan Marie Zimmerman

Susan was born on April 30, 1939 in Keene, NH to William G. Zimmerman, Sr. and Geraldine (Allain) Zimmerman. Susan graduated from St. Joseph's School in Keene, and Our Lady of Monadnock Academy in Jaffrey, NH where she played field hockey, basketball, and was active in many school activities.

She studied nursing and did her clinical work at Hotel Dieu Hospital in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. She received her B.S. in nursing degree from the University of New Hampshire. Throughout her high school and college years, she played trumpet and was the music librarian in the Keene City Band.

Susan started her nursing career at Elliot Community Hospital on lower Main Street in Keene, and moved with the hospital in 1973 to Cheshire Medical Center. She was the secretary for the New Hampshire State Nurses Association. Throughout her nursing career, she was involved in continued professional courses. For more than 40 years, Susan was an emergency room nurse in Keene. Over that same period, she organized and ran the American Red Cross blood drives for the Monadnock region.

She was a very active parishioner of St. Bernard's Catholic Church where she initiated and conducted a religious study program known as WINGS–a fall and spring speakers program for 15 years covering various topics of interest with local and visiting priests from NH, MA & Washington DC. She also began and organized a prayer shawl ministry, which has donated over 1,000 prayer shawls to the ill, hospitalized and homebound in the greater Keene area and beyond.

Susan was Program Chair of the Keene Area American Association of University Women (AAUW), past president of the Old Homestead Garden Club, past president of the Swanzey Lake Association, and served as a Lake Host at Swanzey Lake. She was a board member of the UNH Cooperative Extension Service of Cheshire County and the Master Gardener Program.

Having lived on Kendall Road and Chapman Road for many years, Susan moved to Covenant Living in 2019. Her mission in life was always to help people in a variety of ways; helping and encouraging people and did so with her infectious laugh and good sense of humor.

In 2016, Susan was honored by the Keene Sentinel as an Extraordinary Woman for “exceptional contributions to the Monadnock region”. For so many who knew Susan, it was the love, kindness and compassion that encompassed her beautiful smile and being.

Susan enjoyed skiing throughout many of our New England ski areas. She also skied in Utah, Chamonix, Tignes, and Val-d’Isere in France. Susan also traveled from Vienna to Ireland, throughout central, southern and northern Europe and was so grateful to later accompany her wonderful father on another “grand tour”.

In China, Susan also traveled by train, boat and plane (and even by private car when the airport had not been completed). She traveled extensively, thousands of miles from Beijing to the far western province of Xinjiang bordering Afghanistan and Kashgar and back through central and northern China. Susan also traveled through much of southeast Asia from Hong Kong throughout much of Thailand, Malaysia, to Singapore to Indonesia, where she toured much of the mountainous and semitropical countryside (including an elephant ride), down to the massive Borobudur Temple.

Susan is survived by her sister Martha Jane Zimmerman, her brother Dr. William G. Zimmerman, Jr. and his wife Ruth (McNeill), five nieces: Joan (Pete) Mattila, Judy (Mike) Doherty, Kathleen (Jim) Bennett, Mary Pat (Scott) Parker, and Theresa (Shawn) Lillie, her cousins Diane (Zimmerman) Farina of Surry and Deidre (Zimmerman) Taylor of Glenmont, NY, seventeen grandnieces and grandnephews, a great-grandniece and a great-grandnephew.

A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated at St. Bernard's Catholic Church in Keene on Saturday, February 25th at 11:00AM. Burial with committal prayers will follow in the St. Joseph Cemetery, Main Street, Keene. There are no calling hours.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be given to St Vincent dePaul Food Pantry (for those in need throughout the area), c/o Parish of the Holy Spirit, 161 Main Street, Keene, NH 03431; or to the Cheshire Health Foundation (for a nursing education program), 580 Court Street, Keene, NH 03431.