Frances Soulé

Long-time Santa Barbara resident Frances Soulé passed away at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital on 6 July 2016 at the age of 80 after a short battle with pancreatic cancer.

She was born Frances Anne Colborn to an Irish-American family in New York in 1936, and grew up in Michigan. She relocated to Santa Barbara with her family in the 1950s, where she met and married her first husband, the late Jude Blau, with whom she had six children. Her second marriage, in 1975, was to John Soulé. Together they raised Fran’s six children and John’s two daughters in a tumultuous but loving family. Her forty-year partnership with John was truly an inspiration to their eight children and all those who knew them.

The warmth of her voice in conversation, the joy in it when she sang, and the uninhibited sound of her laughter have all passed from this world now, but those of us who knew and loved her still hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Fran is survived by her husband and her siblings, Frank and Melissa Colborn, and all of her children, about whom she once said, “I consider them my life’s greatest achievement.” A private memorial will be held at La Casa de Maria – donations may be made in her memory to Valley Churches United Missions – www.vcum.org.