Sue Burnham

Sue Burnham was born on September 10, 1944, to La Vor Burnham and Barbara Jensen Burnham in San Juan County, New Mexico. She spent some of her early years at Coyote Canyon, near Gallup and then Albuquerque when her dad went back to school. But she always felt her real home was Aztec where the family moved when she was six or seven and where she went to school. She graduated from Aztec High in the class of 1962. She remembered those high school years fondly and many of her friends she made there, like Rosina Jacquez and Diana Jenkins. She then moved to Phoenix to live with her grandmother and attend Grand Canyon College.

Later, she left to go off to the "Big City" (Los Angeles, California) to make her fame and fortune. There, she got a job as a teller in a bank and that led to her long and rewarding career in the banking industry. After a couple of years of the "rat race", she moved to Albuquerque and that became her new home. She worked at the Bank of Albuquerque and its successors as the big banks changed names and bought each other out over the years. She enjoyed working with several co-workers who became her friends as well. In her "spare time" Sue earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics from UNM. She developed an expertise in the escrow department and worked as an escrow account manager for several years until her retirement from Albuquerque Escrow in 1998. In 1999, she moved to Farmington and lived there for five years.  During this time, she helped care for her oldest great-niece.  They grew very close due to Sue's loving nurturing.  But Sue missed Albuquerque and considered it her home, so she returned to live there until her death on June 17, 2021. The family is eternally grateful for our brother, Kim, and his angel wife for taking her in and caring for her the last year or so of her life.

Sue was intellectually sharp and extremely well read and self-educated far beyond her formal education. She had a passion for travel and enjoyed her experiences visiting England, Ireland, and Australia. She also enjoyed reading about far-away places and traveled vicariously through hearing other people tell about their travel experiences. She enjoyed reading and became somewhat of a student of Egyptian history and culture. Besides reading and travel, she also enjoyed classic movies and movie stars. She was an avid Lobo fan and enjoyed Lobo Basketball, even when she could only get it on the radio.

She was preceded in death by her parents, her older brother, Wendell, and all of her grandparents and aunts and uncles. She was particularly close to her aunt, Leola Shaw of Mesilla. She is survived by her sister, Kathy Burnham of Santa Fe (La Cienega); Kathy's life-long friend, Carol Jones, and her brothers: Jay Burnham, and his wife, Rosalie of Farmington, and Kim Burnham and his wife, Jean of Albuquerque. She also had five nieces and nephews and seven great nieces and nephews and one great-great niece who called her by her auntie name, "Anna".

There will be a Family Gathering on Saturday, July 10, 2021, at 1:00 p.m., at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 4400 N. College Blvd., Farmington, New Mexico.

Interment of Sue's ashes will follow (about 2:30 p.m.) at Memory Gardens Cemetery, 6917 E. Main, Farmington, New Mexico.