Rosemary “Rosie” Adams Thurber, 94, ever in search of a peaceable kingdom, died in the company of her loving family at Laurel Oaks of South Haven, Michigan, on June 8, 2026. She was a lifelong advocate for the common good of creatures great and small.
Rosie was born in New York City on October 7, 1931, to James Grover Thurber and Althea Adams Thurber. She grew up in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and Cambridge and Amherst, Massachusetts, graduating from the Northampton School for Girls in 1949 and from the University of Pennsylvania in 1953 with a liberal arts degree. At age seventeen she dreamed of being an actor, and it was as a member of the Pennsylvania Players college theater group that she met her future husband, Frederick W. Sauers. They married in Philadelphia and settled in Chicagoland, raised three children, and were married for twenty years. Rosie was active onstage at the Theatre of Western Springs and co-founded a theater troupe that performed for children. She returned to school in her forties, earned a master’s degree in social work at Washington University in St. Louis, then moved to South Haven to live alongside her treasured Lake Michigan.
Rosie worked in support of peace, social justice, the environment, and the arts, often through her associations with the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany and the South Haven Center for the Arts, where she was board president and for years shepherded the July South Haven Art Fair. She was a longtime member of the church, served on the vestry, and found a great source of strength and wisdom in God’s way and through healing prayer. Rosie loved visits from her family, partying with friends, her evening Manhattan, good conversation, and making her point-you wanted her on your side.
As the only child of a celebrated writer and cartoonist, Rosie found her life touched in exceptional ways. Working with publishers, authors, performers, and literary organizations, she guided her father’s literary estate and legacy as a humorist with care and a keen editorial sense. She was a supporting founder of the Thurber House literary center and museum in Columbus, Ohio. Her father dedicated The Last Flower to her in 1939, writing, “For Rosemary, in the wistful hope that her world will be better than mine.” She will now hold that hope for all of us.
Rosie’s survivors include her children, Sara Thurber Sauers (Mike Lewis-Beck) and Greg Thurber Sauers (Mary); her grandchildren, Adam G. Sauers (Olivia Dellios) and Elizabeth A. Valtman (Chris); two great-grandchildren, Adeline and Zoey Valtman; her sister, Linda A. Gilmore; and a nephew and niece, Tim and Zoë Fothergill. She was preceded in death by her son Mark Thurber Sauers; her parents; her stepmother, Helen W. Thurber; and her fondly remembered childhood stepfather, Francis B. Comstock.
A celebration of life is planned for the early fall. Memorial donations may be made to the Church of the Epiphany, Al-Van Humane Society, or the South Haven Center for the Arts.