Susan Dunham

The Baltimore Sun

Susan Dale Arniel Dunham, a single mother of two teenage daughters, died of complications from breast cancer Wednesday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Lutherville resident was 48.

First diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996, Ms. Dunham lived years beyond what her doctors predicted. On May 31, she realized her dream of watching her older daughter, Carolyn Dunham, 18, graduate from Dulaney High School.

Kristen Dunham, 16, will be a senior at Dulaney this year.

Ms. Dunham worked until last month as the circulation and marketing director for the Rosen Group, a Baltimore-based arts marketing and advocacy firm. She contributed to the firm's two publications, AmericanStyle and NICHE.

At the end of her final day of work, Ms. Dunham and her daughters drove to Rehoboth Beach, Del., for the weekend. Though her stomach was bloated from her illness and she would soon enter hospice care, "she was in the sand having a blast," Carolyn Dunham said. "She walked the boardwalk with us."

Never wanting to draw attention to herself, Ms. Dunham only told her closest friends about her health problems. Last fall, while watching one of Kristen's soccer games, her wig flew off in a gust of wind, blowing into a nearby cornfield. She walked over, picked it up, and continued to watch the rest of the game.

She did extensive research on her particular type of cancer. Sometimes, she would call a hospital, pretending to be a doctor to see if she could get her medical test results back early.

"To many people, Sue was a very sweet, soft, reserved person, but Sue was an incredibly feisty individual," said Martha "Marty" Sweeney, her best friend since seventh grade and now the guardian of her daughters. Ms. Dunham had raised her daughters alone since divorcing their father about 15 years ago.

"Except when she had the bone marrow transplant, she worked every day," Ms. Sweeney said. "I would call her in the morning and she would say, 'I was up all night throwing up,' or 'I was up all night with abdominal pain, but I've got to go to work.'"

Carolyn Dunham said of her mother: "She was a single mom doing it all. She worked full time. She took my sister and I to [sports] practices every night and just never gave up. She would be exhausted, and she'd still find the energy to take us to practices."

The younger of two daughters, Ms. Dunham was raised in Loch Raven Village. Her father was a chemical sales manager who ran a part-time business distributing grain products. She graduated from Loch Raven High School in 1976.

She earned a bachelor's degree in business from Towson University in 1980 and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma in 1982.

Ms. Dunham lived in Oklahoma in the 1980s, working for Sooner Federal Financial Services Corp. before moving to a vice president position at Bullseye Database Marketing. Bullseye allowed her to continue in that job after she moved back to Maryland.

She settled in Lutherville in 1989 and worked for Bullseye from home until after her diagnosis with cancer. To cut back on the travel and have more time with her daughters, she left the company for a job at the Rosen Group in the early 2000s.

Her sister, Kathleen Arniel, died suddenly of a suspected aneurysm in 2004 at age 52. Her parents also predeceased her.

Ms. Dunham loved reading history and watching old movies and British sitcoms. In her teen years and early 20s, she went with her family and Ms. Sweeney to Colonial Williamsburg every summer.

In 1996, Ms. Dunham was told she had two years to live. Diagnosed with metastatic cancer in 2002, she was told she had 15 months. In September, doctors predicted she would be dead in three weeks.

"People were saying she was just holding on [because] she wanted to see me graduate," said Carolyn Dunham, who will attend the University of Maryland, College Park. "She was."

Services for Ms. Dunham have been held.

sara.neufeld@baltsun.com

Copyright © 2021, The Baltimore Sun, a Baltimore Sun Media Group publication | Place an Ad
72°