By Dixon Bledsoe
I had to change the name of my column this month to Susan Out Loud and I think you will understand why.
Susan Sasano is leaving the Silver Falls Family YMCA director position she has owned for six and a half years. A song comes to mind from The Sound of Music – “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria.”
My version has a slightly different title – “How to Replace a Treasure Like Our Sue Sue.” The thought is the same. Susan has never been a problem, except as a side in the thorn of inaction, complacency, bureaucracy and the word “no.”
In my 51 years in Silverton, there have been a handful of people who have made such a major impact on the lives of people, and particularly children, that they command and have earned respect. Susan is such a person.
She has done so much for our kids and families that it is hard to track her successes. She has been a veritable ‘whirling dervish.” I get winded watching her.
Susan, working under the benevolent and caring eye of the local Silver Falls Family YMCA Leadership Council and despite the machinations of a less-than-supportive administration in Salem, has had a remarkable track record, starting with, coincidentally, track.
Her hands are all over the K-5 track and field program, which has grown every year since 2007, at a time when spring sports were getting hammered economically in school budgets and she has enticed the kids coming out of those programs to return and mentor their younger charges. She is a kid at heart.
A few years ago she was chosen as the Silver Falls Family YMCA’s volunteer of the year, an odd award for a paid executive director but a clear and adamant statement to everyone local who has benefitted from her largess and certainly those in Salem’s executive offices who don’t understand just how big it is – the hours she has put in go way above her pay grade and she was never one to complain.
In my viewfinder, she was here, then there, then back, then forth, out late, in early. She knows no clock, only that there were kids, families, seniors, waiting to participate in the many programs she helped form, manage, participate in, and advertise and that the magic happened only because she owned and knew how to use the wand.
When asked about her most satisfying story – humorous, cool, bittersweet or otherwise – she simply responds like a consummate politician (which is surely giving her hives as she reads this.)
“There are so many incredible and heartwarming stories that bring happiness and joy to me every day. You know the saying ‘kids say the funniest things?’ Well, every child who participated in basketball, cross country, flag football, soccer, track and field, volleyball, or swimming in the Silver Falls Family YMCA has a beautiful story in my heart,” Susan said.
And she means it. She doesn’t have a fake bone in her body. Not one for bureaucracy but intelligently designed and programmed for results, Susan grew participation in “Y” activities to include kids of all ages, from infants to octogenarians.
There are youth programs, aquatic and group fitness programs for adults, familes and seniors who are active and live healthy, because they met her energy, initiative, charm, enthusiasm, and skills head on and lived to tell about it.
Qualified? Oh, my, yes. She earned and achieved an Associate of Arts Degree in Recreation Leadership and Programming from Leeward Community College in Pearl City, Hawaii; a Bachelors of Science degree in Physical Education and teaching certificate and a Masters in Education, Adaptive Physical Education from Oregon State University in Corvallis.
This diminutive dynamo has a heart the size of Texas. I asked her if she had always had a huge heart. Her response is typical Sasano – “Yes, that is how I was born and raised. No heart equals no life and no soul.”
She is a big fan of the Silver Falls Family YMCA leadership council, a local cadre of caring people willing to provide guidance to the Hawaiian Energizer Bunny.
“They are the most giving and supportive team of community members that I gratefully have come to know personally and professionally. Each member brings individual knowledge and experience but our strength locally lies in being a team. From past council members to present council members, I express my warmest gratitude to you all for believing in me,” Susano says upon finishing up her tenure as executive director, a position from which she resigned.
She is already closing in on a highly-sought after position with an area school, and trust me, after working with her as a two-time Leadership Council member, they are going to be really lucky to have her. The inked deal will happen soon, and she will make major impacts wherever her Nikes land.
Thank you for all you have done for all the people who have participated in the Silver Falls YMCA programs. We are dramatically better for it.
To this Hawaiian human juggernaut, I can say I love you, adore you, and will not lose sight of you. Thank you for showing us your spirit of Aloha and Ohana. You are one of a kind like a more than precious gem.
