Lasting Memories

Gale Bunnell
1948-April 26, 2011
Palo Alto, California

Gale Bunnell, active community volunteer, and former Stanford University employee, died at her Palo Alto home April 26, 2011, of pancreatic cancer.

She was born in 1948 in Newark, N.J. She graduated from high school in Cincinnati, Ohio, and attended Stanford University, earning a bachelor's degree in history in 1970. She then took a job as associate director in Stanford's Office of Public Events, helping to stage the Lively Arts cultural series, commencement, and other functions. Later she joined the Stanford Alumni Association as director of continuing education.

In 1971, she married John Bunnell, then associate director in Stanford's Office of Undergraduate Admission. After her two sons were born, she became an independent meeting planner, and later operated her own financial-services business. In 1997, she joined the Palo Alto office of Alhouse Deaton Management & Leasing, Inc., where she worked as a property manager, partnership administrator, and office manager until December 2010.

For more than a decade, she was active with Pathways, serving from 2007 to 2010 as an officer and member of its Hospice Foundation Board, as well as a member of its "One from the Heart" committee. Pathways honored her for her service recently by establishing "Gale's Garden" at their Sunnyvale headquarters.

She also served on the boards of the Children's Center of the Stanford Community, Region 26 AYSO Soccer, the International School, and Palo Alto Babe Ruth League. She was a parent volunteer for Palo Alto Little League, American Legion Baseball, and the Palo Alto High School Sports Boosters.

John Bunnell described his wife as "a supportive, cheerful, dedicated, athletic, reliable, ethical, generous, and gracious person." Her sons added that "she was an amazing role model and friend."

In addition to her husband she is survived by her two sons, RJ Bunnell, a physician in Salt Lake City, and Matthew Bunnell, an airline transport pilot based in Phoenix, Ariz.; as well as her siblings, Cynthia Carstarphen Gordon and Charles F. Carstarphen, both of San Diego; brother-in-law and sister-in-law Kirk and Gini Bunnell of Bellingham, Wash., and nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, and cousins.