Grace Eileen Salazar (née George) passed away peacefully on February 7, 2025 in Portland, Oregon after a short bout of pneumonia. She moved to Portland from DeKalb, Illinois in 2023 to be near her children and grandchildren on the West Coast. She was 86 years old. 

Grace was born on October 15, 1938 at St. Mary’s Hospital in DeKalb. The daughter of Louis and Lavena George, she grew up in DeKalb, went to St. Mary’s Parochial School, and graduated from DeKalb High School in 1956. 

Raised in the Catholic faith, Grace was idealistic and spiritual from a young age. “I want to be someone the world will remember well,” she wrote in her diary when she was 14. “To be part of a group, of our generation, who work for peace, among men of all races, colors, and creeds, and for Christ.”

In school, Grace’s dream was to be “the next Marie Curie,” so she studied chemistry at Northern Illinois University. She was a good student, but when she didn't get an “A” on her first big chemistry exam, decided it would be more practical to be a nurse instead. Grace graduated from St. Anne’s Nursing School in Chicago in 1961, then moved to San Francisco, California with her brother John and childhood friend Fran Walters.

Grace worked as a nurse at French Hospital in San Francisco where she met her soon-to-be husband Dr. Fausto Salazar, an intern and recent immigrant from Ecuador. At the time there were still miscegenation laws preventing “mixed race” marriages in 21 states, but lucky for them California had repealed its law in 1948. They married at St. Anne’s Church in 1962, lived in the Haight-Ashbury district, and started a family.

After Fausto and other Latino doctors at his hospital lost their jobs due to discrimination, the family briefly lived in Wichita, Kansas in 1965, which was the only place Fausto could find work. They moved back to California the following year, where Fausto started his own private, medical practice in San José catering to the growing Spanish-speaking population.

By 1972, Grace and Fausto had four kids and moved their family to Saratoga, California. Grace had put her career on hold to raise her children, so focused her energy on volunteering at their schools. She was instrumental in starting a multicultural committee that incorporated films and books on Latino, Black, and Asian cultures and women’s rights into the schools’ educational experiences. In addition to helping students celebrate Valentine's Day each year, Grace helped them celebrate Susan B. Anthony’s Birthday on February 15 with a cake and sing-along in the school library.

Grace was a pro-choice feminist, and a member of the National Women’s Political Caucus and the National Organization for Women, as well as a vocal supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she marched in anti-Vietnam War protests, supported César Chávez’s grape boycott, took her kids to ERA demonstrations, and participated in these and other causes with Las Mujeres, a group of feminist friends from Saratoga and Los Gatos.

Grace was proud of her blue-collar background—her dad was a mechanic—and of being a union member. When her children were teens in 1982, Grace went back to work at San José Hospital, joined the California Nurses Association, was elected to its Strike Committee, and walked the picket line with 1,600 fellow nurses who struck Bay Area hospitals at the end of that year. 

Like other mostly female jobs at the time, nursing did not pay well. Striking RNs made less money than window washers, cooks, and dishwashers at the hospitals they worked at, yet nurses were responsible for doing most of the patient care. Early strikes like the one Grace helped organize paved the way for future nurses to get the pay and respect they deserved.

Grace divorced Fausto in 1990 and stayed with one of her Las Mujeres friends Mary Gardner in Los Gatos. Grace and her friends called Mary’s home “WITS (Women In Transition) END,” and it was a time Mary says was filled with wonderful conversations, celebrations, and laughter.

Grace moved back to DeKalb in 1992 where she continued to work as a nurse, eventually specializing in adolescent psychiatry. When a stroke forced her to quit nursing, she worked as a “lunch lady” at Northern Illinois University where she became a rank-and-file union leader helping to successfully organize kitchen staff into the Service Employees International Union.

After retirement, Grace lived for several years at Barb City Manor in DeKalb, which coincidentally had been the first hospital she had worked at as a newly minted RN. After an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Grace moved to Oregon to live near two of her children, making it easier for them to care for her at the end of her life.

Grace is survived by her son Jeffrey Salazar of Colorado; daughter Jennifer Biddle, son-in-law Kurt Biddle, and grandson Rivani Biddle of California; son Richard Salazar of Illinois; and son Alexander Salazar, daughter-in-law Margaret Salazar, and grandchildren Veronica and Gabriel Salazar of Oregon. 

In her last years, Grace was cared for and loved by countless others, including her brother John George; sister Jeannette George Schoenbaum and brother-in-law Mark Schoenbaum; nieces and nephews Janet George, Joette George, Jenny Baarson, Julie Lieving, and Glenn George; Otto Marquardt and Ben Chase; Angela Maroon, Chuck George, and David George. She will be missed by many cousins and other relatives from the George, Faivre, Montavon, and Wells clans throughout Illinois and Indiana, as well as her extended Ecuadorian family, including Teresita Del Salto and Jeannine Salazar in California.

Grace treasured her friends at every stage of her life, stayed in touch with most through the decades, and enjoyed connecting with some over Zoom calls from Portland even after her Alzheimer’s stole her ability to speak clearly. Dear friends include her life-long childhood pals from DeKalb Sarellen Schuh, Jane Sanchez, Fran Stephens, Claire Pintozzi; her high school friend Sally Coyle; her St. Anne’s Nursing School friends Maureen Rogas, Carolyn Engle, and Kate Duffy; her friends from the early days in San Francisco Joan Dani, Nina Saglimbeni, and Margaret Lancellotti; her Las Mujeres friends from Saratoga-Los Gatos, including Joan Bose, Mary Gardner, Pat Blair, Diane Borrison, Phyllis Kendall, Kevil Smith, Pam Nesbit, Shirley Miller, Liz Ansnes, Edy Cheadle, and Marsha Biswell. While several of these friends passed before Grace did, her memory of them never faded.

Grace's Memorial service will be held Saturday, November 8, 2025 at 12:00 noon at Anderson Funeral Home, 2011 S. 4th St., DeKalb IL.  Burial of Grace's cremated remains will follow at St. Mary Cemetery in DeKalb.

Memorial visitation will be held Saturday, November 8, from 10:00 AM until time of service in the funeral home.

 

The memorial service can be viewed via streaming at the link below.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86760974081?pwd=1GkGQjp0w1my7acpwaHqkT0ydQV1hF.1

Grace’s diary entry February 8, 1962:

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Excerpt from “Ode on Intimations of Immortality” by William Wordsworth