At age 76 on June 29, Susan died in Vero Beach, Florida after being debilitated for several years by a chronically painful fractured Sacrum.  She was the daughter of Allan and Lulie Finlay of Wayland.  After graduating from The Winsor School in Boston, she attended Chatham college in Pittsburg for one year, and then at 19, married Donald M. Dunbar, an Episcopal priest, Literature teacher, and varsity baseball coach at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. Ultimately, he left teaching to establish Dunbar Educational Consultants, to enable the family to pay for medical school and Megan’s education.  Together at St. Paul’s, Susan and Don ran the school’s first experimental girl’s dormitory, which housed Concord Academy girls. Three years later, Susan, at Twenty- two years of age, was offered the Head position in the forthcoming girls division of the school.  But preferring to finish her pre-med program at Wellesley College, her husband supported her ambition to apply to medical school, and hence became a guidance counselor in the Weston public school system to be closer to Wellesley. At St. Paul’s the couple had given birth to a daughter, Megan, and while in Weston for four years, Susan worked part time on her degree, commuting daily to Wellesley College.

Four years later, Susan’s husband was offered a job at Phillips Academy, Andover. Thus, the couple reluctantly moved further away from Wellesley, creating a longer commute. Four years later, after finally graduating from Wellesley at thirty-six years of age, Susan applied to two medical schools, Dartmouth and Brown, and got into both. Although discouraged by everyone, she knew, to apply to medical school, at a time when women were supposed to be at home, bearing children and being a dutiful wife and mother, Susan entered Dartmouth Medical school.  Even her husband experienced nothing but criticism from colleagues in Education, for supporting her quest.  Notwithstanding, two Wellesley professors, one in Physics and the other in Literature, had written in her recommendations that she had been their best student ever, in their entire careers. After two years at Dartmouth, Susan transferred to Harvard and ultimately was made an intern at Harvard and then a Fellow.

Once as an intern, Susan was attending a female hospital patient who was about to give birth. Panicked by her lack of training in child birth, Susan ran out into the hall and asked a nurse to call a doctor. The nurse ominously responded with, “You Are The Doctor.” Thus became the name of Susan’s book, written in the last year of her life.  The patient gave birth to twins.

After eight years at Harvard, Susan joined a private practice in Connecticut where she ultimately attracted three thousand patients from the entire tri-state area. Eighteen years later, Yale bought the private practice and made Susan an Associate Professor. As a family, over the years of Susan striving for medical school, Don, Susan and Megan lived in Wayland, Brookline and West Falmouth in Massachusetts, in Fairfield, Connecticut, and finally in Vero Beach, Florida. Belonging to The Country Club of Brookline, Susan worked at the Rider Cup as a medic.

As a physician, specializing in Brain and Breast Cancer, Susan will be remembered for her dedication to her patients’ safety.  Her commitment to patient safety was exemplified, for instance, by her sending all pathological reports for her patients to Harvard for a second opinion. Twice, mothers in their thirties had bien told they had terminal Cancer, while the pathology investigated at Harvard showed they did not have Cancer at all.  She was also known for visiting patients in their homes, at no charge, and for her passion for a team approach, while bringing together colleagues from two rival hospitals. Susan   will be interned at St. Peter’s Church in Weston, Massachusetts.