Remembering Shauna Saunders

Shauna Saunders was a graduate student in the Department of Economics. She died Dec. 3. The Chronicle accepted rememberances from those who knew her.

‘Housemate, sister and best friend’

I lived with Shauna for the last four-and-a-half years in three different locations.  Though we started as housemates, over the years we grew extremely close. Shauna was my housemate, sister and best friend, rolled into one.  

Together we hosted many a dinner party, costume party and plain old get-together and I have photographic evidence of the silliness unleashed among quite a few upstanding Duke students at these affairs. We spent so much time together, and I miss her so keenly, it’s hard to put into words.

Like her idol, Jane Austen, Shauna was a sharp social observer and satirist, yet never  cruel. In e-mails, phone conversations and lovely hand-written notes she would not only poke fun at her friends, family, colleagues in economics and her doctors, but would skewer herself as well.

Even as liver failure claimed her body, she maintained these traits. In late November of last year, in the hospital, we brought in a humidifier that put out a fairly strong current of  moistened air. At one point, she wanted to have a wind chime over the air stream to encourage the circulation of “chi.” I fussed with the configuration to gain the maximum chiming possible. Though appreciative of my work, after a  while she proclaimed, in a self-deprecating tone, “OK, enough with the chi.”

Indeed, she maintained her droll sense of humor to the end.

When returning from abroad, it is often awkward to walk around West Campus and catch the eyes of a professor or TA from a former class. I doubt many students would look forward to bumping into a former TA and regurgitating the repetitive explanation of how great being abroad was, and how it is so strange to be back at Duke. On my first day back, I had made a point of trying to find Shauna to discuss the progress of my economics major, and to see how her dissertation was coming together. Unfortunately, the first time I saw her face was on the front page of The Chronicle.

Shauna was a passionate helper. She was always friendly and encouraging with her comments, and she made it clear that not only was she fully reading and analyzing my essays, but she sincerely wanted to see insightful improvement on the next assignment.

When I met privately with her to discuss my progress, her suggestions were detailed and supportive. Her enthusiasm for teaching economics was fully understood by our professor, Craufurd Goodwin, who showed the utmost respect for Shauna’s opinions and treated her as his equal in the classroom. In a field dominated by pre-professional men looking to take the first direct flight from Durham to Wall Street, Shauna taught me to appreciate Economic History for the scholarly development of the discipline, rather than the immediate possibilities for profit maximization.

She was a direct influence on my choice of major, and her passion for the academic evolution of the field will not be lost on my career and life, nor on the all-too-few others fortunate enough to have been taught by her.

Jason Loughnane

Trinity ’06

An empathetic and attentive listener

Shauna Saunders was a better listener han anyone I’ve ever known, with an ear exquisitely tuned to the needs of others. She punctuated her attentiveness with a distinctly Canadian mm-hmm that she intoned with the subtlety and clear connotation of a woodwind, sometimes to soothe, sometimes to draw a person out, and sometimes, in combination with the arched eyebrow, to gently remind me that I was full of it.

When I think of Shauna, I often see her sitting at a table or, in times when she felt less well, propped in her bed, smiling as I enthused with happiness or nodding as I unburdened myself of grief and confusion.

Through her own illness and pain, Shauna retained her ability to understand and give consolation. Several years ago, even from her hospital bed, she listened sympathetically as I talked about the trauma my father’s cancer inflicted on me and my family. Shauna understood that people who share their problems usually aren’t asking for advice, which made it all the easier to talk to her.

It would be easy to think that Shauna’s empathy came from her long experience with illness, but I don’t think that’s exactly right. Getting to know her parents and sister in the last couple of years gave me some insight into her gentleness, her ability to talk about the most serious things in life without flinching, and the special way she comforted with sarcasm.

Shauna’s passion for Jane Austen suggests the importance she put on manners, never an empty shell and not merely an anthropological window onto the culture of a society, but an expression of kindness, sympathy, honesty and the other ethical values that she held dear. It is hard to say whether Shauna learned any of this from Austen, or simply saw her as a kindred soul. I would have liked to ask her about this, and now I will never have the chance.  More awful, I will not have her help to guide me through the experience of her death. I know I am not alone in this feeling.

Dan Levinson Wilk

Grad ’05