Saryl Corrick Von der Porten

Born in Chicago on March 16, 1933, to Gerald and Pearl Corrick, her earliest years were spent in the Midwest.

  Her family moved to San Francisco when she was a teenager.  She graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School

 and San Francisco State College.  While in college, she met her future husband.  She taught elementary school for a few years

 in San Francisco, Napa and Penngrove.  In 1960, she and her family moved to her great-grandparents’ town

 of Santa Rosa.  They traveled extensively in Europe and the United States, often in a Volkswagen camper, many of the

journeys supporting her husband’s maritime historical and archaeological researches.  They moved to San Francisco in 1985.

  She always maintained a welcoming home for many interesting visitors from many states and countries.

For two summers she and her husband worked on the archaeology of Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose.  They were crewpersons

 on the Liberty Ship SS Jeremiah O’Brien’s fiftieth-anniversary voyage to Normandy and English ports.  She was the manager

 of the Treasure Island Museum Association while her husband was the museum’s director.  For eleven years, she was

headquarters manager of the Baja California archaeological expeditions that uncovered the wreck site of a 1576 Manila galleon.  

Saryl was active in the American Association of University Women, president of the Santa Rosa chapter, and a regular

 attendee at two monthly bridge groups for half a century.  She volunteered with organizations such as Santa Rosa’s Treasure

House and parent-teacher associations, and recorded textbooks for blind college students.  Her stitchery interest led her to

create numerous and varied needle works, to participate in various stitchery organizations, and to collect historic needlework

 tools.  She and her husband assembled a large collection of World War II home-front artifacts which are

destined for an appropriate museum.

Always widening her interests, she was a frequent attendee at Explorers Club, Westerners, and historical

association meetings.

At her request, there will be no memorial service.  Donations in her memory could be sent to one’s favorite educational institution.