Remembering Suzanne Fain
Suzanne Fain has been part of the fabric of my adult life since the early eighties. I was young and just finding my footing coming out of a divorce when I joined a women’s group, and there was Suzanne. Already so entirely herself. Brilliant, funny, enigmatic, accomplished and unapologetic. She and John were running the wonderful A Movable Feast, she had just finished law school, and, because apparently that wasn’t enough, she was learning to fly.
Just amazing. I adored her from that very first meeting, and I never stopped.
Over the next decades, she was simply there—the way the truest friends are. Among the tiny handful of friends when Bob and I married, at our children’s weddings and our celebrations, and frequently around our dining room table. Our lives just kept weaving in and out of one another’s.
When the notion of Recipe for Success was little more than an idea, I went to Suzanne for advice. She was onboard immediately and swung into action, opening doors, rallying our Les Dames sisters and the nascent Slow Food community to the cause and lending her own considerable credibility to what I was trying to build.
Years later, she quietly nominated me for an award—and didn’t tell me until it was done. That was Suzanne. Quietly working behind the scenes, making things happen for people she believed in, no credit required.
She and John showed up. Around the table at fundraisers, celebrations and milestones, year after year. In 2022, I had the great joy of honoring them. I am especially grateful that we had the chance to shine the well-deserved spotlight while Suzanne was sitting right there to hear it, just how much their friendship and steadfast support and leadership and mentoring had meant to me, to Recipe for Success and to so many people in our community.
And now, somehow, even in death, she is still there. Forty-five years after I first met this extraordinary woman, she is still reaching back, still opening a door, still helping me with something we both cared about. Still being the steadfast friend she always was. I am heartbroken. But at the same time, I am profoundly grateful that for most of my life I got to have Suzanne Fain in my world. I will miss her more than words can say.
I invite you to visit Hope Farms someday to see some of the wonderful aspects of our campus that Suzanne made possible. She funded the interior buildout of our Market—often the first impression for visitors, and the Peg Lee Culinary Classroom, which welcomes hundreds of students a month and honors another extraordinary advocate of the Foundation. Despite Suzanne’s protestations, we wanted to put her name on something. So, when you walk through the pergola that runs the length of our Gathering Barn’s the south side, you’ll see a small sign peeping out: The Walk of Fain.
– Gracie Cavnar
