Maureen (Saindon) Robb
ROANOKE, Va. – Maureen (Saindon) Robb passed away in Roanoke, Va., on Jan. 4, 2024, several months after the sudden onset of a fatal illness.
She leaves behind her loving companion and husband of 50 years, John Barrett Robb, and her younger sister, Gail (Saindon) Dewitt of Foley, Ala.
Maureen was of French-Canadian ancestry and was born on Oct. 17, 1950 to Rudy and Louise (LaChance) Saindon, of Brunswick.
Maureen was a talented writer, and an editor of 48 years experience when she retired from Carilion Clinic of Virginia in 2020 to resume her brief career as a published mystery novel author. She was hired by Carilion in 2008 to revitalize the Carilion quarterly community outreach magazine that was printed in a run of over 100,000 copies.
Previously in her career Maureen had been (to take things in reverse order): the editor of the Randolph-Macon College magazine; a technical editor at the leading national consortium of airport systems designers (a subsidiary of the consultancy conglomerate KPMG) located in Silicon Valley on the San Francisco, Calif. peninsula; an editor-writer at the Contra Costa Times, a daily newspaper in the SF East Bay; the San Francisco-based West Coast bureau chief of the national business and shipping newspaper, the New York Journal of Commerce (first published in 1827); editor of the Daily Commercial News, a daily business newspaper in San Francisco, Calif. (where she interviewed, in 1978, a first time San Francisco mayoral candidate named Diane Feinstein); and at 22 (just a year out of Fordham University in New York City, N.Y., where she graduated with a degree in Communications/Journalism) the San Francisco-based editor of California Farmer, and another trade publication.
Maureen was also the author of the first of an intended series of mystery novels, “Patterns in Silicon” (2004), set in the San Francisco Bay Area, and featuring, as amateur sleuth, up and coming San Francisco restaurateur, Lea Sherwood. Her husband is hoping to publish a second and final book in the series, for which Maureen left a completed manuscript.
Throughout her career, what Maureen particularly excelled at was accurately comprehending the complexities of expert opinions, and translating her understanding into highly readable, comprehensible prose. She consistently received unsolicited praise, not just from her readers, but from her expert interview subjects, who were surprised and gratified at finally being understood.
Friends or fans of Maureen are invited to make a donation in her name
to her (and her husband’s) favorite charity:
Best Friends
Animal Society,
near Kanab, Utah
(https://bestfriends.org/)
Send questions/comments to the editors.
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