In loving memory of Peggy

Born July 18, 1955, as the second of five children to Hazel & Michael Sullivan in Missoula, Mont., Peggy was a stranger to no one & a friend to all. Her talents at tennis showed at an early age & she was a star player throughout her life including holding every office in the Sandpoint Tennis Association. She was a member of the Sparkettes drill team & graduated from Sentinel High School (Missoula, Mont.) in 1973. Peggy wanted to spread her love for others & pursue nursing, she began her studies at the University of Montana & was a lifelong Griz fan. She continued at St. Patrick’s School of Nursing earning her nursing degree in 1978. 

As a traveling nurse, she journeyed from Montana to Hawaii to Texas & finally to Idaho. In 1982 she drove across the Long Bridge to Sandpoint, fell in love with the lake, put down roots, & made it her home until her earthly departure. 

She & Tom Fuqua welcomed their two greatest joys, Hailey Rebecca in 1988 & Stephanie Mikayla in 1990. She was like a mother to many friends of the girls over their lifetime, giving rides to practices, a shoulder to cry on, or a Dairy Depot burger run after picking up the girls from a night out.

If there was a soccer match, basketball game, track meet, choir concert, or opera recital within a 5,000-mile radius, she was there. She was proud as could be of Hailey & Stephanie, telling anyone within earshot of their latest project, accomplishment, or performance. Peggy once again beamed with honor as she was able to walk each of them down the aisle in June & September 2022. 

Peggy had four true loves: tennis, Lake Pend Oreille, Ireland, & her daughters. Her grandfather landed in New England from County Kerry in the nineteen-teens & her family’s deep love for their home country has continued ever since. She held dual citizenship & visited her beloved homeland almost every year since 2010. Peggy, her daughters, siblings, & best friends took her on a final pilgrimage to Killarney in July 2023 to kiss Irish soil once more. The familial connection with the O’Sullivans spans generations & continues with her children. When returning to her maiden name, Peggy opted to include the dropped O’ as a nod to her heritage.

As the indisputable best nurse in Bonner County, she served & cared for the community over four decades at Bonner General Hospital and Kaniksu Community Health. She was a proud member of Teamsters Local 690. 

She was diagnosed with ALS in August 2021 & continued her life as she had lived prior to the disease, capturing as many adventures, memories, & fun times as possible. “You only live once!” was her frequent mantra and led a full 68 years, always generous & selfless, caring for others above all else. She always had a song in her heart and&was ready to dance. Though ALS took her voice, body, & eventually her breath, she never waived the white flag & continued to fight.

Your gift is directly funding cutting-edge research to discover the many treatments that are needed to end ALS. Through this fundraiser, a Pharmacology Weigh Station will be named in Peggy's honor. This workhorse station within the lab uses a high sensitive scale which allows for extremely accurate measurements of drugs that are prepared into formulations for delivery to animals and cells. The set-up uses an extremely heavy weight table that neutralizes environmental vibration and a faraday cage inside the scale to neutralize the effects of ionic charges on measurements of very small quantities of powders or solutions. Accuracy and precision are essential for reproducible and interpretable science.

The ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI) is the Drug Discovery Engine for ALS. They will continue discovering drugs until all people with ALS have effective treatments. ALS TDI’s sole mission is to discover and develop treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) as quickly as possible. ALS TDI is the most comprehensive drug discovery lab dedicated to ALS research. As one of the world’s only nonprofit biotech companies, they are led by drug development experts and people with ALS.