Diana Wright Langmuir Rosenthal died peacefully at her home in Oakland, Calif., alert and surrounded by her entire family. She was 69 and died of complications arising from cancer.
Born in Fairfax, Va., where she lived until she was five, she moved to Canada and then at age nine to California, where she lived most of the rest of her life. She attended Vassar College for two years and then graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where she also obtained a teaching credential. She worked as a third grade teacher for several years, and also worked for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in New York.
In 1970 she married her first husband, Brockenbrough Allen, with whom she had two daughters. Her second marriage occurred in 1986, to composer Laurence Rosenthal, with whom she had a son. Mrs. Rosenthal served as a partner with her husband in the management of his musical career until just before her death. She spent every summer on Martha’s Vineyard, where the family has a home in East Chop.
Through her parents, Mrs. Rosenthal was exposed to the ideas and teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff from an early age, and spent 50 years of her life working within this teaching. She was particularly dedicated to the Gurdjieff Movements, some 200 sacred dances brought by Gurdjieff during his life, and devoted much of her time to helping others experience and appreciate the movements. In the last decade of her life she was deeply involved in an international project to document and preserve the movements in undistorted form.
Diana was an exceptional person with fine mind, body and heart, who combined great organization and executive ability with a capacity to connect with everyone she met. She developed many close friendships around the world across all the diverse domains of her life, and was a focal point for her extended family as sister, aunt and cousin. While always busily engaged, she often said that her greatest accomplishment was to be a mother, and she was looking forward to continuing as devoted grandmother. Diagnosed with terminal cancer in November of 2013, she maintained an entirely positive attitude towards herself and others, remaining compassionate and engaged with those around her to the very end.
A memorial service attended by 250 friends took place in San Francisco on July 25. A service on the East Coast took place Sept. 27 on Martha’s Vineyard, where her ashes have been buried at the Chilmark cemetery.
Diana is survived by her husband, Laurence Rosenthal, children Celeste Krumboltz, Sophia Genone and Jonathan Rosenthal; grandchildren Lucia and Marco Genone and Chloe Krumboltz; brother Charles Langmuir, sister Jean Langmuir, and two nieces, Molly Langmuir and Jessica Blinn.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Mrs. Rosenthal’s name to the Charlotte Maxwell Complimentary Clinic, a charity for the support of underserved women dealing with cancer. Please mail contributions to: Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic, 610 16th street, Suite 426, Oakland, CA 94612.
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