Sydnee Lee (McEnerney) Tyson

May 3, 2021

Sydnee Lee Tyson died of cancer, May 3, 2021, in El Cerrito, CA.

Sydnee received her diploma from McClatchy High School (‘65) in Sacramento, CA. She graduated from Stanford (‘69) and received an MAT degree in 1970 from Yale. She left California in 1977 to enter the Foreign Service, and as a Foreign Service information officer she served with her Foreign Service officer husband, Don, at Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Belgrade.

She accompanied Don and their two daughters to Managua, where she supported embassy families as co-Community Liaison Officer, and to Moscow and Sydney.

Following her return to the U.S., as Education and Youth Officer at the U.S. Department of State Family Liaison Office Sydnee helped Foreign Service families find the right school for their children when the parents were assigned to a non-family post.

After a later stint at the U.S. Department of Labor, Sydnee and Don returned to California, where she coached students in writing at local middle and high schools. With contributions from her sister and cousins she completed a heartfelt and humorous memoir of her maternal grandfather, “Gramps.”

Sydnee made friends wherever she went, from childhood and high school, to fellow students at Stanford and Yale, to her Foreign Service postings and later, and she nurtured those friendships even at long distance.

Her time in Group XIII at Stanford’s Florence campus during the 1966 devastating flood occupied a special place in her heart and her memories. An evening with her fellow Italy XIII members was the high point of her 50th Stanford reunion. An accomplished and adventurous cook, an enthusiastic gardener, and a movie buff, Sydnee was also an avid reader. In addition to histories, essays and biographies she was a fan of long fiction, from Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” to George R. R. Martin’s five-volume “Song of Ice and Fire,” Diana Gabaldon’s eight-volume “Outlander” novels and, most recently, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume “Neapolitan Quartet.”

She loved the screen adaptions, especially the soundtracks, of LOTR and “Outlander,” even as she waited with hope for Gabaldon’s promised two remaining volumes of her epic.

Separately, Anne Lamott’s essays and stories of humor, kindness and moments of grace supported her spirit and comforted her during her illness.

“I think of myself as someone who is devoted to language, to words, to literature. Yes, I am an English major, Garrison Keillor,” she declared, but she searched in vain for exactly the right words to say farewell. Instead, she found what she was looking for in music: “Life,” by Ludovico Einaudi, reflected for her the sorrows and joys of her own life.

“The magical surge and ebb and transcendence of the music itself summed up to me what Life has been for me,” she wrote. “The music inspires in me a kind of flight of imagination that is akin to flying, with rising movement, swoops downward, both weakening then strengthening. A haunting refrain appears then bows away in honor of the next climb into a higher place than where I was before. “This music makes me happy. Then it makes me sad. Then happy once again. This music represents to me my immense gratitude for the great privilege I have enjoyed to have shared my life with all of you whom I love and must now leave. Life is all about love, after all.”

Sydnee is survived by her husband of 49 years, Don, daughters Jessica and Elizabeth, her granddaughter Jane Tyson Coghlan, of Washington, DC, and her sister, Claudia McEnerney, of Roseville, CA, as well as cousins, nieces, and nephews. Services will be private.