Olivia Danna Wilner Schaeffer, z”l, died unexpectedly Nov. 6 of complications related to an aortic valve replacement in Portland. She was 78 years old. She is survived by her husband of 59 years, Benson Schaeffer, and her three brothers, David Wilner, Justin Wilner and Adam Wilner, all of California. She was preceded in death by her effervescent and magnetic daughter, actress Rebecca Schaeffer.
Danna Wilner was born in Atlanta in 1943 near the army base where her father, Daniel, was stationed and her mother, Lucile, made a home. She grew up in Los Angeles, Baltimore and New York City. She married – early and well – to Benson Schaeffer in 1963 and gave birth to Rebecca in 1967. Danna received an M.A. and M.F.A. from the University of Oregon in Eugene. In 1980, the family moved to Portland, where Danna taught English and creative writing at Portland-area colleges and universities. She regularly published short stories, poems, articles and reviews.
When Rebecca left home at 16 for New York to become an actress – she was cast in the television shows “One Life to Live” and “My Sister Sam” and also in several movies, notably “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills” and “Radio Days” – Danna’s interest turned to the theater, and she began writing plays. “City Women,” an evening of one-act plays set in world capitals, premiered in 1988.
Danna could not have been prouder of her daughter, a young woman of uncommon grace and wisdom. BDR (Benson-Danna-Rebecca, as she always signed the many birthday and holiday cards she sent) were a close-knit trio. Rebecca may have flown the nest early, but the family always spent the holiday season together, several times on fabulous trips to some far-flung land. In 1986, they went to Warsaw, Bialystok, Vienna and Budapest. The next year, it was the Amazon, Rio Negro and Manaus.
One of the highlights of Danna’s life was visiting Rebecca on the set of a movie she was filming in Rome and Venice. Danna would write about this trip, with its light, joy, love and humor, in her acclaimed one-woman play years later. It was the last time she would see her daughter.
Everything changed on July 18, 1989, when Rebecca was shot on her doorstep in Los Angeles by an obsessed fan.
Rebecca’s murder divided Danna’s life into “before” and “after.” Danna managed to survive her daughter’s murder, and by some accounts even thrive. Danna was the rarest of human beings, one who could face and absorb anguish head on while at the same time remaining open to the world and its wonders. She welcomed new experiences and hard work. Danna spent two years lobbying for gun control. In 1989, she co-founded Oregonians Against Gun Violence with Nan Whittaker, and in 1991, she went to Washington, D.C., to work in support of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (known as the Brady Bill), which was signed into law in late 1991 by President Clinton.
If Danna had an idea, she followed it. If she wanted to pursue a passion, she pursued it. In 1996, Danna and her brother, Adam Wilner, founded BookRadio, an audio website focused on presenting book reviews and author interviews – a podcast, in essence, well ahead of its time. In 2003, she decided to go back to school and earn another M.A., this one in counseling psychology from Lewis and Clark College, after which she spent a happy decade in private practice in downtown Portland.
In 2013, she closed her counseling practice to focus on her writing and performance. For a lark – Danna loved a lark! – she created a fortune teller character, Madame Olivia, a literate thinker with a talent for delivering encouraging, nonreligious advice and character readings.
Danna’s greatest professional achievement was the creation of her one-woman show “You in Midair,” which she described as Rebecca’s story through her own perspective. It debuted at the Portland Fertile Ground Festival in 2017 and enjoyed a successful run at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2018. In his review, critic Kristopher Haines wrote, “Schaeffer’s brisk one-woman show is almost surely to be the most devastating piece of theatre this year. That said, somehow there’s room for completely unexpected humor, mostly dealing with the unrealistic expectations of outsiders about how grief should be processed. The show’s greatest asset is its honesty, its unashamed willingness to tell the truth. Ms. Schaeffer has no time for weak platitudes. She’s the kind of person who finds solace in a book of quotes about death, because they are real, and not designed to bring comfort to someone who can’t be comforted, and knows it.”
Danna was a brilliant, active woman driven to pursue her curiosity, but that was only one side of her. She was deeply interested in others, and as she came to know them, she was always present, cognitively, emotionally and empathetically. Danna was, what some would say, a menschen kenner, a people knower. Danna saw deeply into people, the good and the bad, and emphasized the good.
As time passed, and the children of her friends grew up, they became Danna’s friends. Delia, the grown daughter of a friend of Benson’s, recalls that Danna was always interested in her life, even when she was very small. Barbara, one of Rebecca’s dearest friends, became a dear friend of Danna’s after Rebecca died. Barbara recollects that Danna taught her how to live, inspiring her to remain curious about the world, to try to connect with people on a deeper level, and always, no matter what, to be brave.
Danna befriended and championed a young Czech woman who was starting a cleaning service in Portland. Martina recalled how once Danna called her a “badass” for deciding to open her own business: “I didn’t know what that meant. I knew what bad meant, and I knew what ass meant. I thought I had done something wrong! Then she explained it to me, and I will just never forget how we laughed.”
Her adult niece, Davina, recalls how Auntie Danna often told the story of meeting her when she was 10 days old, exclaiming over how magnificent she was, already holding up her head and looking around at the world. She wrote in an email, speaking for everyone who knew Danna, “It felt so good to be loved by her.”