Remembering Sasha Greenawalt

by Sylvia des Tombe and Lianne Card

Sasha Greenawalt passed away peacefully on September 3, 2023, in a care facility near to her twin sister outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

Sasha was born in Chicago, IL in 1943. When Sasha was ten, the family moved to Seattle, Washington. While her parents liked it, Sasha found it too rainy. She found drier weather when she was accepted at Stanford University. Having taken a class in Russian to fulfill a foreign language requirement, she ended up majoring in Russian language and literature. Indeed, she even started dreaming in Russian!

She married after graduating and, along with her husband, completed a three-year course of training on medical technology and lab work to obtain her laboratory technician license. In addition to her hospital work, she began doing research connected with space stations. She drew on her Russian language knowledge when visiting Star City in Moscow, Russia, and working at NASA to prepare cosmonauts and astronauts for experiments to be performed at space stations and shuttles. 

Sasha first became aware of Subud while at Stanford, where her Jujitsu class teacher was a Subud member. Feeling that she was looking for some kind of spiritual guidance, Sasha eventually told this teacher that she wanted to be opened. After doing latihan with different groups in the Bay area, she joined the Palo Alto group in the mid-1980’s. Irena fondly remembers commuting together to latihan.

Her parents had chosen the name “Sally” for her, but when she was older, after considering many names, she changed it to “Sasha.” When she became a Subud member, she wrote to Ibu to check that this name was right for her but, not receiving an answer, continued to use it. Then, two years later, she came across a letter from Ibu which confirmed her choice. Sasha meant “helper” and “one who assists a helper.” 

Sasha was intrepid in her love of adventure. She and Maia Chisholm  paddled their kayaks together through the Elkhorn Slough, Lexington reservoir, and Pinto Lake. She also loved to camp out in the desert in Baja on weekends.

Although she suffered from Parkinson’s Disease since the late 1990’s, Sasha remained very active. With Sylvia, she joined a meetup group where they read Russian Classics in Translation. In this way she maintained a connection with her original college love of Russian literature. She also participated in a discussion group about foreign affairs, and spent weekends with Leoma and Leanna in creativity workshops.

She pursued an interest in Marine Biology and started to lead tours of tide pools as a docent. With her housemate, Jan Pelinka, she moved to Half Moon Bay in 2017, to be closer to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. They became co-editors of the Reserve’s newsletter, Between the Tides. 

In the years when she lived in Half Moon Bay but could no longer drive, Sasha, Rosabelle Lynes, and Sylvia des Tombe commuted together to latihans in Palo Alto. Both Sylvia and Rosabelle remember Sasha’s strong and quiet presence as well as their wide-ranging conversations.

Sasha moved to the care facility in New Mexico in 2022. Sasha wanted to be cremated, and her twin sister in Arizona arranged to send her ashes to family members in Seattle, who will cast the ashes into the Puget Sound. The Puget Sound splits into two currents; one goes south to California and one stays near Seattle. So, her ashes will go to the two locations where Sasha lived.