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Julia Samson Dyett '97

Dec. 9, 1974-Aug. 24, 2020

Julia Samson Dyett ’97, who lived her life in service to others, died on Aug. 24, 2020, after a three-year battle with ovarian cancer. She was 46. 

“Those who knew Julia at Hamilton fondly remember her wide smile and sunny disposition, her spontaneity, creativity, and sense of humor,” wrote Class President Lindsey Pizzica Rotolo ’97 in announcing news of Dyett’s passing to the class. “While she was often the one ensuring we had an especially good time, Julia had a serious side as well. She was an excellent student, very bright and industrious. Julia immersed herself in painting and studying the Spanish language in her college years, spending her junior year abroad in Madrid.” 

After graduating from Hamilton with a degree in Spanish, Dyett attended nursing school at Boston College, graduating summa cum laude. Her adventurous spirit led her to a cross-country move in the fall of 2001, where she settled in the Mission District of San Francisco. She worked as a trauma nurse at San Francisco General Hospital for nearly 20 years. 

Dyett also did some per diem work with Hospice over the years, and completed two tours in Africa with Doctors without Borders in the mid-2000s. She did a brief tour in Zimbabwe, where she survived a car-jacking, and another longer stint in the Darfur region of Sudan at the height of the conflict. There she worked in a women’s critical care tent, caring for women dying from starvation or gunshot wounds. “It was a grim experience, to say the least, and while that period in her life shook her to her core, it deepened Julia’s already firmly established sense of spirituality,” Rotolo wrote. 

Devoted to her community, Dyett volunteered nearly every Tuesday for 19 years at a food pantry in San Francisco. At the end of her life, she reflected on how lucky she was to be born into a loving family with a great sense of humor, and to have amassed a large circle of supportive friends. 

“Julia died in peace, with the deep-rooted knowledge that she was needed for something greater on the other side, and she looked forward to being reunited with her father who predeceased her by two years,” Rotolo added. 

Dyett’s survivors include her mother, sister, and beloved dog, Mars. 

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