Paula Johanna Erna Hartmann was born in Germany 21 December 1906. Her parents were Paul and Frida Stuhr Hartmann. She had one sister only, Hertha, who was 18 months older than she.

Paula and her mother arrived in San Francisco, California, in 1911, several months after Paula's sister and father arrived there. Paula and Hertha started school together in San Francisco.

Around 1917 Paula's family and some of her father's extended family moved from The City to a little ranch in the Sierra foothills near Raymond, California. Paula and her sister delivered milk and butter in Raymond on their way to school. Paula took pleasure in the birds and flowers that she saw in the foothills. She became excited each year as cherries and other seasonal fruits became available. She and her family lived in the foothills until she and Hertha graduated from high school while Paula was 17 years old. Then the family of four moved back to San Francisco where the girls both got office jobs. In later years Paula was proud of her skills at shorthand and typing which she learned at Raymond Union High School.

Paula became a Registered Nurse, taking her training at the County Hospital in San Francisco. Her last promotion as a nurse made her supervisor of a shift on one ward of the hospital. She was working at the County Hospital when she met her husband to be, William W. "Bill" Saunders.

Paula and Bill married at the San Francisco City Hall 27 January 1941. Bill's sister, Florence, was their only wedding witness. The bride and groom went back to work after their lunch-hour wedding.

Paula's children were Patricia Saunders, born in Oakland, California, in 1945 and Sandra Saunders, born in San Francisco in 1949. Paula's finest hours were spent reading bedtime stories to her girls; she used multiple voices for the characters and showed delight in the children's stories in English that she had not known as a child in a German speaking household.

Thus Paula earned the status that she looked for as a mother and doctor's wife in a household where she did not have to earn money outside her home. In later years she volunteered in the office of a high school and was very upset when the school offered to pay her to do the same functions. She took pleasure in living in the house in Sausalito that she had helped to design.

Paula lived with her family in several homes in the San Francisco Bay Area. She moved with her family to Martinsburg, West Virginia and Washington, DC. She and her family moved to Palo Alto, California, when her older daughter went away to college. Paula and Bill made a number of international trips after Bill's retirement in 1962.

During her last years, Paula lived with her husband in Mill Valley, Marin County, California. She died 27 Apr 1985 at the age of 78.