Deborah Sampson Green

Deborah passed away peacefully in Seattle, Washington. Deborah was a writer, editor, poet, painter, filmmaker, photographer, and teacher. She was a loving friend, mother, grandmother, sister, and aunt. She was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and lived most of her early life there. As a child she also lived in several western States as her father, Dr. John Jacob Sampson, served stateside as a physician in the Army. She attended Lowell High School in San Francisco and Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Following college, she was an assistant teacher at Shady Hill School in Cambridge and then taught at the Anna Head School in Berkeley. She worked as a manuscript editor at Ramparts magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. In 1968, she married Dr. John Robert Green and moved to Seattle. In 1971, they had their son, Caleb John (Banta-) Green. Following the death of her husband and true love in 1974, she focused her energy on raising her son. She co-wrote her first self-published book Songs and Words in 1974 with John Sundsten, John Robert Green, and Russell Wills. Throughout this time, she regularly took notes of her observations of how Caleb processed the death of his father and later self-published the book One Boy in 2006.

In the mid-1970’s she worked as a manuscript assistant to the Editor of the medical journal Epilepsia in the neurology department at the University of Washington. Over the decades, she worked part time as an editor in various capacities. She was proud to have helped edit Aaron Dixon’s book My People are Rising.

In mid-life she attended graduate school at the University of Washington and received a Master’s in Teaching in 1993. She put this degree to use as an instructor of English at local community colleges for 15 years. She put a great deal of thought into how she structured her classes and cared deeply for her students. She carried that same attention to structure in how she wrote as well as how she placed words on the pages of her self-published books. She cared greatly for her friends and fellow writers and poets with whom she wrote and met regularly while drinking tea and eating cookies and chocolate.

In her retirement, she continued to write and created very personal and thoughtfully curated spaces around her, within her home and her wildflower gardens. She was the biggest fan of her son, Caleb, a researcher at the University of Washington, and followed his work closely. She was also a huge fan of her grandsons Bobby and Pete, celebrating their sports, art, academic, and other achievements.

She is survived by her son Caleb John Banta-Green, daughter-in-law Katherine Bruce Banta-Green, and their sons Robert Bruce and Peter Caleb. She is survived by her stepdaughter Shelley Beversdorf, husband Dr. David Beversdorf, and her sons Gordon and Kevin Wooldridge, William Beversdorf, and daughters Catherine and Amelia Beversdorf. She is survived by her stepdaughter Lynn Pavlinovic and her sons Alexander and Emil Pavlinovic. She is survived by her sister Janet Reider (husband Tom Frankel) and brother John F. Sampson (wife Sharon Litsky) and six wonderful nephews and nieces. She is also survived by longtime family friend, Jesse (Carl) Schaeffer, who helped care for her and her family over the years.

She was preceded in death by her husband Dr. John Robert Green, her father Dr. John Jacob Sampson, mother Rose Etta (Kahn) Sampson, and her granddaughter Lucy Galloway Banta-Green (stillborn).

When asked, she said she wanted to be remembered for her writing. This poem is from her 2010 book Curving to Light:

April Dream

Trying to get to

the green bare hills

high rounded hills

close   yet no map   no one

can find them    I know they

wait    I’ve been there

by the sea    walking easy

over hills    flower fields    We

can find them

we can walk them

Easy—come with me