Susan Taylor-Conner, therapist and counselor

Susan Taylor-Conner, 66, of Chestnut Hill, a longtime therapist and a cofounder of a counseling center in Glenside, died Thursday, Oct. 31, at her home from lung and brain cancer.

Mrs. Taylor-Conner worked at several agencies before joining Roy Shirley to establish Cornerstone Center for Change in 1987. She led retreat groups with a focus on finding meaning in later life, said her son, Matthew Taylor.

Mrs. Taylor-Conner was born Susan Stryker Dunn in White Plains, N.Y., the youngest of three children.

She was raised on Manhattan's Upper East Side and graduated from the Nightingale-Bamford School. She graduated from Wheelock College in Boston in 1969, and in 1980 received a master's in counseling from Philadelphia's Antioch College.

While in college she met David Van Ness Taylor and they married in 1969. They moved to East Mount Airy in 1972. The couple divorced in 1977.

In 1979, she married William Reed Conner. They divorced in 1986.

Despite the prognosis of her illness, Mrs. Taylor-Conner, who died eight months after her diagnosis, took it in stride, according to her son.

"From Day One she decided it was another part of her life and she would embrace it," he said.

Carol Coster, a close friend of Mrs. Taylor-Conner's, said, "Even in hospice, she was still so beautiful up until the day she died. She had a radiance and inner beauty about her."

Besides her son, Mrs. Taylor-Conner is survived by daughters Eliza Taylor and Susannah Ridgeway Connor; a brother; a sister; two grandsons; and her two former husbands.

A private event will be held this month for friends and family. A public event will be held next spring in western Massachusetts.

Donations may be made to Animas Valley Institute, Box 1020, 170 E. 12th St., Suite 9, Durango, Colo. 81302, or the Center for Action and Contemplation, Box 12464, Albuquerque, N.M. 87195.