Farewell to writer, mother and friend Sara Peyton
A memorial service will be held Saturday, June 20, at the Occidental Center for the Arts at 11 am.
Local writer Sara Peyton spoke with the voice of her adopted Northern California as well as to the joys and challenges of her generation. A gifted journalist and essayist whose work appeared throughout Sonoma County media, she was a vibrant member of the North Bay literary community, a book reviewer and spirited conversationalist who could strum the ukulele, paint watercolors, write poetry, and (taking after her late husband) pinpoint birds and native flowers.
Peyton, 74, died after a long illness, June 7, at the Occidental family home she and her husband, journalist George Snyder, bought 43 years ago. It was the same home where they raised their two sons, who were at her side as she passed.
Sara moved to San Francisco in the late 1970s and met her future husband, George Snyder, while working as an editorial assistant at the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. In the early 1980s, they moved first to Camp Meeker and later to Occidental, where they both became intertwined with the local community. George went on to be a veteran writer for the Chronicle–he retired as one of their longest-serving writers, revered for his coverage of environmental issues in Northern California. He died in 2013.
Although she spent more than four decades in Sonoma County, Peyton was born and raised in Redding, Connecticut, and attended college at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She never lost her fondness for the New England atmosphere of lobsters and clams and fall colors, and returned frequently to visit the many relatives left there.
As a journalist, Sara wrote columns and articles for newspapers such as the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the Sebastopol Times and News, The Paper and the Bohemian. Her literary pursuits were wide-ranging, including as book reviewer and author profile writer for The Press Democrat. She published pieces in a variety of magazines, including a self-revelatory piece in More Magazine, a national publication targeting women over 40. She also worked in diverse communications roles, writing, editing and social media for companies including Copperfield’s Books, O’Reilly and Associates and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For a time, she also taught creative writing at Sonoma State University. She published short stories in two local collections and was immersed in several writing groups and workshops.
Of her work in local media, her former newspaper editors, John Boland and James Carroll, said: “Sara played an important part in recreating The Paper and later the Sonoma County Independent during some wild times. We are forever grateful for her talents, for her compassion, and for her generous spirit. It was Sara who made possible some of the most lasting contributions of the newspaper, including the focus on the local literary scene. She was a fierce journalist but had a great sense of humor. We will always remember her smile and her laugh brightening the newsroom. We hold her in our hearts with great respect and affection.”
Sara’s writing included intensely personal pieces, among them the story of the son she gave up for adoption when she was just 18 years old, conceived at the legendary Woodstock music festival. Using a pseudonym for the boy she had tracked down when he was nearly 32 years old, Cory, she wrote in More Magazine in 2003: “Watching [Cory] barbecue at his home recently, I had an odd sensation of passing through a time machine—from my current world to one that has always included him. I looked at the back deck, squinted into the fading sunlight and felt the cool evening breeze. As I watched [Cory] interact with his friends and his wife, I knew that his life still is a rich one. I also realized that it would not have been improved in any way if I hadn’t given him up for adoption, and that was both a healing and painful understanding.” They remained in touch, Sara last seeing Cory just a few weeks before she passed.
In another compelling essay focused on the challenges of raising two biracial sons in the aftermath of 911 racial profiling, Sara wrote: “I begged (one) not to travel with his Arab language book, but he just laughed. When I look at my sons, I see my mother’s distinctive high cheekbones, my siblings’ toothy grins, and my husband’s wide shoulders. But I know that strangers (sometimes) see something else. ‘Remember to smile,’ I yelled after them as they walked out the door.’”
Beyond the writing, Sara was distinctly devoted and always inquisitive, as a mother, grandmother, friend and traveler, as passionate about her family on both coasts as she was about dogs, birds and hiking, music and movies, art and the artistry of living life to its fullest. In the last year of her life, she participated mightily in a knitting group that met weekly at her house, still courting new friends. She would turn conversations with family, friends and neighbors outward, delving into the details of a new movie, award shows, a New Yorker article or books by Elizabeth Strout or Ann Patchett. She was a voracious and critical reader of news, proud of participating in many progressive marches and rallies, carrying on the tradition started when she was living in Boston in the early ’70s, then into the turmoil of the 1970s in San Francisco, up to and including the No Kings protests in Santa Rosa and Sebastopol. (Her thoughts on the current administration cannot be printed.)
She is survived by her sons Samuel Snyder of San Diego, CA (wife Patrice and their three children, Clark, Eileen and Paul), and Tobias Snyder of Oakland (wife Delthia and their two children, Olympia and Cato); stepchildren Jesse Snyder of Albany, NY and Cree Snyder Schmidt of Beder, Denmark; biological son Cory Ondrejka of Los Gatos, CA; two brothers, James Peyton of Santa Rosa and Craig Peyton of Rhinebeck, NY; three sisters: Martha Peyton Reynolds of Walpole, NH, and Liz Prince of Nyack, NY, and Elizabeth Peyton of New York, NY; her stepmother Liz Peyton of Santa Rosa, CA; and numerous nieces and nephews. Besides her husband George Snyder, she was preceded in death by her parents, her stepfather, sister Susan Prince and brother Aaron Prince.
A memorial service will be held Saturday, June 20, at the Occidental Center for the Arts at 11 am. The family suggests donations to Dogwood Animal Rescue.