The funeral service took place at 2:30 pm PST on Saturday, November 15, 2025
Sydney Russell
February 23, 1948 - September 11, 2025
Dear friends,
Sydney Russell, a beloved member of the Amsterdam Center of the Fellowship of Friends, completed her task on September 11, 2025, from complications due to kidney failure.
Sydney was born on February 23, 1948. She was 77 years old on her last birthday. She joined the Fellowship on October 12, 1973. She supported many centers over the 52 years, including Apollo, Atlanta, London, New York, Paris, and San Francisco. Her last decades were spent in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Sydney was devoted to the school and the Teacher. She was known for her ability to help her friends in many ways along their spiritual journey. She inspired many in the years she spent transforming the suffering of her physical body.
Sydney loved poetry, theater, and literature, and her zest for life was a keynote of her being.
She will be missed.
On behalf of all who knew you, we give thanks.
The Elysian Society
Funeral Service Text: Sydney Russell 2025-11
For this is thy hour, O soul,
thy free flight into the wordless.
– Walt Whitman
Dear Sydney, a spiritual Friend I remember both visible with the presence of the Invisible. ‘Anybody home?’ during a meeting on the Herengracht Teaching house, ‘Do you see that tree?’ while driving to the garden center, ‘You’re so kind’, and ‘I am a cheerful person’, upon my admiration for her endurance of great physical suffering. Thank you dear Sydney❤️.
Even though I haven’t met you in person I take so much inspiration from your life story; a life of service, joy, friendships, suffering & transformation. Thank you dear Sydney.
Sydney was courageous, bright, and alive: always vibrant, always engaging. When she was part of a center, she supported that center. You knew that she was there. She had a good understanding of the work, she was very well read, and she had an excellent background in all the arts, especially the theater. She directed and produced a magnificent performance of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at what was then called the Town Hall. With all of these qualities she was the perfect gift to every new student – to say nothing of the rest of us. She got a near complete transformation of her final illness, and that over many long difficult years. Our School would not be the same without Sydney! What can we do but thank her?