Sally Ann Dunn

Sally Ann Dunn, strong, independent, loving, and generous, died suddenly of a heart attack in her home in Atlanta after a brief illness on Nov. 24, 2021. She was 72.

Concerned about the world and all its peoples, and especially about climate change and the prevalence of guns in America, she worked diligently and gave to many groups to make it better. Yet through it all she was clever, witty, and fun-loving.  And she strived to be cheerful. On an Atlanta spring morning in 2021, with the windows open, birds were singing and for a moment sirens were also in the air. She often said that there were only so many things she could worry about at a time. She remarked, “You can have sirens in your life, or birdsong. I prefer birdsong.”

Sally was beautiful. She was stylish, tasteful and restrained. A friend sitting in her living room in Atlanta once told her, “Your house deserves to be in a magazine.” But she was also practical. She was supremely competent at everything she did, from handling a merger to installing a light switch to preparing a meal for 140 after church.

Sally was a fantastic cook. She loved gardening, and all her yards had flowers and were landscaped. But she always said that if something died, that was the way it was and she moved on.      

She loved the beach. She was a book-lover and English major, and on vacation at Grayton Beach, FL, her family called her “book-a-day Sal.” All her cats were dear to her, but especially Bess and Happy, and her dogs Harry and Blue, whom she called “the wonder dog.”

Sally was a child of the 60s, but she was also traditional, especially when it came to family. She was fiercely loyal, and took great care of her husband and sons, even when she was juggling a demanding job and her community activities. She was excellent in a crisis.

She was a private person, a stoic who treasured her alone time.

Born in Poughkeepsie, NY, on August 24, 1949, Sally and her family moved to Lexington, KY, when she was a child. There she was a Latin scholar, and she graduated from Tates Creek High School. She was a lifeguard at her community pool. At Indiana University she was on the steering committee of the IU Student Foundation, traveling the country to raise funds. She also joined the Pi Beta Phi sorority, her mother’s.

After graduation, she moved to Atlanta without a job or friends. She soon found work at Merrill Lynch. Early in the morning, she volunteered for the George McGovern presidential campaign, feeding sound bites of his speeches to radio stations across the Southeast.

Moving to Louisville after she married Jay Lawrence, a newspaper reporter, she progressed at Norton-Children’s Hospital, ultimately overseeing all admissions. The couple lived first on Belgravia Court in Old Louisville, where she was on he board of the court association and active in the St. James Art Fair. Then they moved to a historic renovated house nearby on Sixth Street, where she threw great parties.

She demonstrated her aplomb in Louisville in a classic manner. Early one morning on a Friday the 13th in 1981, 10 miles of sewers exploded loudly across town, not far from her home. She called her husband, at work at The Courier-Journal, and merely asked him to phone her when it was time to get up for work, since the power was out and she had an electric alarm clock.

Her two sons were born at the hospital where she worked. When they were still very young, the family moved to St. Louis. There she changed professions and rose to become a vice president of retail operations at Mercantile Bank. She worked there until the late 90s. She was a board member of the neighborhood association and the day-care center, then a room mother for both boys and a board member of University City Residential Services, for whom she ran a city-wide house tour one year.

She and her family joined Trinity Presbyterian Church, and she was a Sunday School teacher, a key figure in its food pantry and the go-to person to prepare food for large numbers of parishioners.

She was a big fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, and loved going to spring training.

Moving back to Atlanta in 2010, she gardened, read even more books and gave to even more charities and traveled, including to New York City to see Broadway plays, a tour of Scotland and week-long stays at Cumberland Island National Seashore.

She and her husband shared the closeness that can come as a long-time marriage endures.

Sally is deeply mourned by her husband of 45 years, and by her sons Sam and Jack and their partners Casey Critchlow and Emily Lachajczk, by her grandson Lucas, and by her sister Mindy and brothers Dana and Don. Also in sadness are many other family members and friends.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in her honor to Planned Parenthood, the Equal Justice Initiative, the Sierra Club or another charity of choice.

You did good, Sally.