Diana Mary Fassino

Diana Fassino died on November 18, 2025, a few days after her 94th birthday peacefully in her husband, Richard’s arms. Jane and Steve Dettwiler and Richard’s son, Rob, were also beside her in their Hailey home along with her precious 2 dogs.

Diana was an accomplished author of short stories, two books, newspaper columns and opinion pieces. She was also a multi-media artist working in sculpture, wood carving, paper-mache and oil painting. Most of all, she loved life, nature and animals with the most important focus being her family and friends, known collectively as her “beloveds”.

If you met Diana in person, she probably made an impact on you that is warmly remembered to this day. It was not an impact of raw power, but rather of a joyful light that seemed to come from her smile, her giggles, her interest in you and your life, her empathy, her love of conversation and her energy and enthusiasm to interact with you.

Diana always lived her life under the adage “I do not want to die regretting or not exploring the things that I could have done and didn’t”. She often referred to living by what she called “Wabi-Sabi” – a Japanese philosophy that finds beauty in imperfection and incompleteness. She celebrated authenticity, simplicity, the natural process of aging and the transient nature of life and found pleasure in simple, modest things, operating with the idea that “less is more”. She believed in keeping busy, another little adage she often used was: “if you don’t move it, you lose it”.

Her short stories written in England reflected on her observations of normal people, mainly other women and the challenges they faced in daily life. That continued into an advice column in the local newspaper, the Wood River Journal after she moved to Sun Valley in 1991. Her two books reflected the early years of her life, growing up in a world which none of her children nor grandchildren would have known about if she hadn’t written this history for them. The interest shown in her self-published first book shown only to friends and family, resulted in a second book, with both books ending up being sold on Amazon. Diana did readings from her books at the Ketchum Community Library and articles by Karen Bossick and Sabina Dana Plasse appeared in the Wood River Journal (purchased by The Mountain Express in 2008).

Her other artistic accomplishments in sculpture, oil painting, paper mache and the carving of wooden front doors depicting scenes from the Wood River Valley were sold around the valley.

As news of Diana’s death spread, memories from friends often included words like “she always gave us a feeling of joy and adventure, and her power of storytelling brought color into our lives”. Another friend commented that her outlook and talent was so uplifting and inspiring that re-reading her books brought back memories of her laughter at the wonderful garden lunches they used to share.

The light that shone from Diana was often mentioned and it was thus amazing that within 2 hours of her death, the skies over Hailey and Sun Valley produced a magnificent exceptionally colorful sunset that many of her friends captured in photos, not knowing that she had just died and when they found out they called it Diana’s gift to them on her way out. Another of our close friends captured a red rainbow shooting up to the heavens which he referred to as Diana heading up to meet her beloved friends and family who had gone before her.

Diana is survived by her husband, Richard, her children Jane and Steve Dettwiler, her stepson, Rob and her grandchildren from her deceased daughter, Ming Shipp: Chimo, Olie and Serena Shipp and her granddaughter from Steve: Tania Dettwiler as well as numerous great grandchildren, all living in Maui.

Per Diana’s wishes, there will be no memorial service or funeral. The family asks, in lieu of flowers that donations be made to the Hospice & Palliative Care of the Wood River Valley, who provided exemplary care to Diana and her family in their time of need.

Memories and condolences may be shared with the family using the guestbook section below.