Susan Spence died peacefully at a skilled nursing facility in South Kingstown, R.I. on April 10. She was 84 years old.

Susan Kathleen Spence was born on Sept. 30, 1940 to John and Phyllis (Johnson) Spence in Chicago Il. On her eighth birthday, the family moved into a newly built Keck & Keck home in Bensenville. Il. which featured innovative design elements such as radiant flooring and passive solar heating. This house and the family’s involvement in Chicago’s modernist movement would initiate Susan’s lifelong interest in design.

She learned to sail at Camp Lake Hubert in Minnesota, and the family spent summer vacations together at Ten Mile Lake, near Hackensack, Minn. After graduating from Fenton High School in 1958, she attended Grinnell College in Iowa as both her parents had. She majored in psychology and graduated in 1962.

Susan married Raymond (Ray) Daniel Horton, a fellow Grinnellian, in September, 1962. The couple lived in Cambridge, then New York City. They divorced in February 1971.

Susan worked in the New York City mayor’s office for crisis management under Mayors John Lindsay, Abe Beame and Ed Koch. It was there that she met Linda Mitchell, now of Chilmark, with whom she maintained a close friendship for the rest of her life. She earned an MBA from Columbia in the early 1980s, and married Richard (Rick) Jay Glassberg, a Brooklyn native, in January 1982. They lived in Brooklyn Heights and started a successful public relations firm, which ran for about a decade. New York’s all-black chic, dynamic multiculturalism and uninhibited use of expletives stuck with Susan to the end.

To escape summer in the city, she made frequent visits to her maternal grandmother at “Crab Cottage” in Niantic, Conn., sailing the tidal river in a Sunfish. Susan and Rick also rented for a few summers on Martha’s Vineyard. They fell in love with the Island and eventually moved full-time to West Tisbury along with Susan’s parents in 1991. Together they researched and wrote the book Magic Time, a guide to kids’ activities on the Island, illustrated by Oak Bluffs artist Renee Balter and published in 1994.

Susan and Rick divorced in 2011.

While living in West Tisbury, she worked in various capacities on housing and building projects. She was proud to have participated in the 1994 Agricultural Hall barn raising. Later, she became actively involved in the Island Affordable Housing Fund (now the Island Housing Trust), advocating for the priorities of the year-round community.

She developed an oral history of the Vanderhoop Homestead from interviews with tribal elders, which informed the building’s historic restoration effort. Collaborating with Bob Musser, a life-long friend from her Grinnell years, she designed and built a cottage in Makonikey. She also enjoyed smaller-scale creative projects with friends, from knitting to flower arranging to papermaking.

Like her mother, Susan had a soft spot for animals. She seemed to unfailingly attract (and ultimately adopt) stray cats wherever she lived, and delighted in caring for friends’ chickens and goats on the Island. She also befriended the local crows, going through many sacks of cracked corn every winter. She loved the beach in all seasons, and leapt at any chance to go for a sail.

Susan was preceded in death by her parents and many well-loved pets. She is survived by her brother Jack Spence, sister-in-law Katherine Yih, niece Darcy Spence, and dear friends near and far.

Donations in Susan’s name can be made to the Island Housing Trust (ihtmv.org).