In Memoriam

Wanda Panduren was born in Deford, Michigan.  She was Salutatorian of the 1943 graduating class of Oxford High School and worked for thirty years in the Probate and Superior Courts of her native state and Arizona.  She made her home in the desert east of Scottsdale where the surrounding nature helped inspire her poetry.  Wanda studied at Oakland University-Michigan, Central Arizona College, and Arizona State University with an emphasis on the arts and creative writing.  Her poems have appeared in Bitterroot, Encore, The Country Poet, Lucid Stone, Sandcutters, and various journals, anthologies, and newspapers.  She published two chapbooks: Word Pictures and More Word Pictures.  A noted writer and choral musician, one of her projects was working on a series of poems inspired by the Pacific Ocean near her summer home in San Luis Obispo, California.  Wanda served as an executive board member of the Arizona State Poetry Society and the East Valley Poets.  She was a featured poet at McGee Park Poets in Carlsbad, California; the Corners of the Mouth series in San Luis Obispo; Mars Gallery and Divergent Arts in Phoenix; and at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts in Arizona.  Her poem Basket of Fire, describing world-famous glass artist Dale Chihuly's Blue Basket of Fire, was selected by the Tempe Arts Commission to be printed into 50,000 bookmarks which were distributed to schools and libraries throughout Arizona.  A great-grandmother, she was preceded in death by her husband of forty-five years, Nicholai Panduren.  Wanda Marie Spencer Panduren: 9/13/1925 - 6/6/2005.