Karen Driscoll Sulenski
Died unexpectedly on December 17, 2014 at her home in San Francisco, at the age of 70. Beloved wife of Colonel (Retired) Joseph Sulenski, her husband of 43 years; good friend to her step-sons Jay, Jeffrey (Nancy) and Jonathan (Jacqueline), loving grandmother of five grandchildren, Louis, Babra, Kaitlyn, Mackenzie and Olivia, two great grandchildren, and beloved by her siblings, Raymond (deceased), Patricia, Elaine, Barbara and Laurence and her many nieces and nephews.
Karen was born and raised in Queens, N.Y., where she attended grammar school and high school before attending nursing school in Virginia. After graduating from nursing school, she left New York and travelled to San Francisco in 1968. She worked in the neurosurgery ward of Letterman Hospital at the Presidio in San Francisco where she admitted and then fell in love with her future husband, Joseph. Karen and Joe were engaged on Christmas Eve 1970. Shortly thereafter she came down with cancer (melanoma). She was a cancer survivor who received experimental and successful treatment at the Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York, where she lived with six nuns, one of whom was her sister. While there she enlivened their lives with her music and vivaciousness. She returned to San Francisco to marry Joe on November 6, 1971. She worked at Blue Shield, Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford and at St. Mary’s Hospital. While at St. Mary’s she went to school at night, earning a Master’s Degree in Public Administration at the University of San Francisco in 1991. In May 1998, she gave up clinical nursing and took a position in administration at California Pacific Medical Center as Director of Compliance until 2005 when she was in Charge of Accreditation until she retired in 2011. She returned to CPMC as a consultant and finally retired in 2012.
She was a Past President of the Silverado Country Club where she was an avid golfer. She had a vibrant, loving and caring personality, and she brightened every room she entered.
Friends may visit Friday, January 9, 2015, after 4:00pm with a Rosary/Vigil to follow at 6:00pm at St. Apollinaris at 3700 Lassen Street, in Napa, California. A Funeral Mass will be held at St. Apollinaris, on Saturday, January 10, 2015, at 11:00am. She will be interred at Arlington Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.