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Sue has dual citizenship—Vermont and Sea Cliff. She grew up in Sea Cliff only because her grandfather was a country doctor in Worcester, VT who made many house calls during the great flu epidemic of 1917-18 that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, including him. That started the family moving. Her mother attended Columbia Presbyterian School of Nursing and met Sue’s father in the city. But Sue went back to Green Mountain College in Poultney, VT for higher education.
Sue grew in a close family with younger brother Peter and older sister Gail. Sue’s father was a draftsman who later became an architect. He was also a master gardener, sailor, and registered bee keeper. Their home was on 17th Ave. near the long flight of wooden steps that led to a little scrap of beach next to Newell’s Dock, about halfway between the Pavilion and Rum Point where Prospect Ave. reached the beach. She grew strong swimming and playing outside and in with neighborhood kids who included Al Behrmann and brothers. She stays strong swimming in Vermont.
When Sue’s college roommate married a Vermonter and introduced Sue to a friend up there, Sue was back in New York beginning to work with the airline industry. Sue, who left school intent on becoming a stewardess and traveling far and wide, found herself office-bound in American Airlines, working with special accounts and living in Jackson Heights. She remained friends with her roommate’s husband after short marriage ended, and he brought a load of friends with him to camp in Sue’s apartment while they visited the 1964 World’s Fair. “Bodies were sacked out on the carpet everywhere,” Sue recalls, and one of them was this fellow Ralph she had met at her roommate’s. She started flying to Vermont and he began visiting New York and in a year they married.
When she married her husband Ralph, she put her business skills to work in a printing company that they owned and operated for 30 years in Rutland, Vermont. Sue also devoted her time to raising three children, two of whom have graduated from college. She left the printing business in 1996 when her husband died. Her father, who had moved from South Carolina to Vermont and across the street from Sue, also died in 1996 at age 88. Her mother died in 2001 at age 87. Sue has a busy life of volunteer work, home maintenance, and travel. She helps run her church’s office, visits shut-ins and the hospitalized, and is an almost daily assistant to a blind friend. She has also sung in the church choir for 25 years. She now counts four grandchildren.
Sue swims every morning, sometimes starting at 7:30, and she tends to her Vermont property where she does everything from mowing and pruning to snow and ice removal. Her steady companions are her daring duo of dogs, a young schipperke and an aging shepherd. As a member of the Folksmarch, a Syracuse group dedicated to 5 to 10 kilometer walks, yearly camping trips, and other tours. Sue has been to all but three states in the US, as well as Italy, Scotland, England, Austria, Germany, and Holland, fulfilling one of the motives for her intended career as a stewardess.
Despite her long residence in Vermont, Sue has never really left her neighborhood. She recently visited her 17th Avenue neighbor Mrs. Behrmann. Sue’s own father died five months after her husband in 1996 and her mom died in December 2000. She regularly gets together with neighbors and schoolmates Janet Smith and Norwegian immigrant Karin Espeland.
