Susan Jane Detwiler

Susan Jane Detwiler emerged into the light and took her first breath on January 4, 1953 in Bucks County, PA.. Her earliest memory was of her father, Gerald Detwiler, carrying her in his arms through the hurricane floodwaters from their house to a neighbor’s higher ground.

As a child Susan began cultivating her gentle skills and caring personality with small rescued and adopted animals. Animals played a role for the rest of her life: Archie the robin, Petunia the skunk, Benjie the racoon, assorted toads, turtles, a baby alligator, white mice, a hamster, and Nelson the rabbit that went to college with her, two miniature Schnauzers in her adult life, Megan and Lily, and Blacky the cat. Black-tailed deer and wild turkeys camp out in her yard; a doe looked in the living room window several times during Susan’s last days on the sofa.

Caring for people began with teenage jobs babysitting, summer camp for developmentally disabled children, and summer jobs after graduating from Central Bucks West High School, Doylestown, PA, at the county home for the elderly. Susan followed in her parent’s footsteps and became a teacher. She took her mother Marian’s advice to be independent and explore the world.

Elementary classroom student teaching while at Elizabethtown College was followed by a first full-time job in St. Michael’s, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Her next stop was the Lutheran Parish School on St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. She loved life and friends on the island, so that she eventually moved to a public school in order to be able to afford to stay. Her next job, with a local travel agency, both enabled her to stay longer on St. Thomas and to see more of the world. Travel adventures took her to Perú, México, Ecuador, and other Caribbean islands.

Susan’s spiritual life was first nurtured at home and her father’s lifelong church,Trinity Lutheran, Lansdale, PA. It was cultivated at Lutheran and Dutch Reformed churches and in Bible study with friends on St.Thomas. And it led her back to Pennsylvania to attend Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary to earn a Master of Arts in Religion degree. Her teaching skills, her caring and religious values, and her academic training converged in her next job as Refugee Sponsorship Developer for Lutheran Children and Family Service in Philadelphia. The next five years were devoted to helping church congregations care for newly arriving refugees.

In 1991 Susan married Steven Timmons, whose forestry career had taken him to Oregon. She moved west. She found a church home at Ascension Lutheran, Medford. She taught at White City Intermediate School for several years, gave birth to Samuel, and took time to be a stay-at-home mother to care full-time for her son, before returning to employment for seventeen years at Ascension Lutheran Church. She retired as the Coordinator for Youth and Family Ministry in 2018 .

Susan and Steve visited her nephew Peter in Barrow, Alaska, in 2019, but further retirement travel plans were stalled by COVID travel restrictions and then the pancreatic cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Susan took her last breath on July 17, 2025. She was supported by the arms of her husband Steve and son Samuel during her last weeks. She will be long loved and deeply missed by all the friends and family that were touched by her kind and caring spirit. One of Susan’s final wishes is expressed in the words of a song used in worship at Ascencion: “If we all said a prayer for each other every day, what a wonderful world this would be. I would ask God to bless you and keep you every day, knowing you’d say the same prayer for me.”

Susan loved flowers, but asked that any gifts in her memory be donations to the

Refugee Resettlement Fund, Trinity Lutheran Church, 1000 W. Main St., Lansdale, PA 19446, or to Youth and Family Ministry, Ascension Lutheran Church, 675 Black Oak Dr, Medford, OR 97504

Online contributions to Trinity may be made at: https://secure.myvanco.com/L-YRBK/campaign/C-125CJ