Caroline Goodrich Torre died in her home this past Friday, December 16, 2016.
She was born on February 23, 1926, as Caroline de Saussure Goodrich, the youngest daughter of Henriette de Saussure Blanding and Chauncey Shafter Goodrich.
She attended Peninsula school, where she met in first grade her oldest surviving friend, Ingrid Beach, and discovered her creative gifts as an artist. Later, she went to Scripps College, where she studied art under Millard Sheets and others, and she traveled to southern Africa in 1947.
After college, she married Gary Jerome Torre, a former student of her stepfather Willard ("Bull") Durham, on Christmas day, 1948. They lived most of their life in the East Bay, largely in Oakland. They opened their hearth and hearts to many family and friends, a welcome made possible above all through her quiet and generous work.
After raising her three children, she returned to her love of painting; her works were occasionally exhibited and sold, often through the Oakland Art Association, and many grace the walls of her family and friends.
She was the youngest and last surviving child of her parents, her brother Chauncey and her two sisters Margaret and Elizabeth predeceasing her.
She was happily married for over 64 years, her husband dying in January, 2013.
She will be remembered by all who knew her for her ever-patient, gentle dignity, her sense of adventure, her delight in beauty—in art, nature, and people—and her thoughtful and generous loving-kindness to all… and for her great beauty, right up to her final weeks! The radiance she brought to all around her is now being felt keenly by its absence.
She is survived by her three children, Michael, Alicia, and Nicolo, their spouses—Mireya Letayf, Jonathan Nimer, and Sonia Sandhu—and by grandchildren, a great-grandson, and numerous nieces and nephews.
She showed by her entire life that it is enough to love well all who are given to us to be a truly beautiful person.
Her funeral will be held at 11 am, this Wednesday, December 21st, at Corpus Christi Church, Piedmont.
Published in San Francisco Chronicle on Dec. 20, 2016