Pana Lynn Wilder

With her family at her side, Pana Wilder died peacefully in her home at the University Retirement Community in Davis, California on September 28, 2025. Pana died of glioblastoma, a terminal brain cancer. She was diagnosed in August, 2024, ten days after returning with her husband Hugh Wilder from a three-week hiking trip to Switzerland. When her hospice chaplain asked shortly before her death about that trip, she replied that “it was the culmination of a perfect life.”

For Pana, the perfect life included fierce commitment and dedication, passion and compassion, adventure, unconditional love and care for family and friends. And a bit of travel, pottery, running, reading, writing and cooking mixed in.

Born in Chicago and raised in Highland Park, Illinois, she attended Denison University in Ohio and earned her Bachelor of Science in Education at the University of Illinois. Marrying Hugh Wilder in 1968, Pana and Hugh lived in London, Ontario, Oxford, Ohio, Charleston, South Carolina, retirement communities in Arizona and California, finally finding their home in Davis. Some called them nomads. She made fast friends everywhere, and kept them.

Pana was a teacher. Mostly, she taught reading and writing to middle schoolers, but her career in education began in the Head Start program in Chicago in the mid-1960s and over the years she taught in public schools at all grade levels. She was also a counselor, earning her Master of Science degree in Guidance and Counseling from Miami University. She loved teaching. She also published papers in professional journals on a variety of topics, ranging from the need for grief counseling in schools to the lingering problem of corporal punishment in schools. Her professional work was always guided by her commitment to help her students create their best selves.

Pana was a talented potter, creating marvelous functional and decorative work. At studios near home and at several arts and crafts schools, including Penland in North Carolina and Arrowmont in Tennessee, Pana studied with some of America’s best potters. She loved getting her hands in the clay and working on the wheel.

Pana was an athlete. Discovering that she was a runner in the 1970s, she trained for 50 years to stay healthy and fit and to run races. She competed at every distance from 5 Ks to half-marathons, winning and placing in the top three in her age group in major national road races (the Bolder Boulder, the Charleston Bridge Run) and countless local races. She loved her Charleston running group, especially its Sunday morning runs followed by big pot-luck breakfasts - their version of a biathlon. She led girls running groups in schools where she taught.

Pana was a traveler. Greece and France were favorite destinations, and Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Italy, Switzerland, Ecuador, New Zealand offered magical adventures for Pana and Hugh. Walking New Zealand tracks, hiking the Alps, swimming in the Aegean, kayaking in the Galapagos, Pana loved it all.

Pana was a loving and deeply loved wife, mother and grandmother. College sweethearts, Pana and Hugh were married for 57 years. They raised wonderful sons, Nick and Jason, who married wonderful women, Megan and Ari. Jason and Ari brought two wonderful children into the family, Margot and Henry. All cherished parts of Pana’s full life.

Pana’s family thanks her UC Davis Health cancer team for its humane and professional care and support, her hospice caregivers and her kind and caring nurses at the Health Center.

A celebration of Pana’s life will be held in Charleston, South Carolina on a date to be announced. Arrangements are under the direction of Smith Funeral Home in Davis, California. Please consider making any memorial donations to the National Brain Tumor Society (braintumor.org).