I am sad to report that Sue Arnn, my mother’s sister and my Aunt Sue since the day I was born, has died in San Antonio at age 83.

It occurred to me after receiving the news that I don’t have that many pictures of her. Most of them are at my mother’s house. But I have a few, including one of my mother and Sue when they were very young, ca. 1935. Sue’s the little sister in the picture.
Here she is with her husband Ken (d. 2002) and her son Ralph (b. 1963) in Denton, Tex., in August 1967, just before they returned to where they lived at the time, South Dakota.
In March 2007, we met Sue for lunch — also in Denton — and here she is with Ann and Lilly, her grandnieces. Sue also had three granddaughters.
Independent-minded Sue did many things: graduated from Alamo Heights High School (30 years before I did); attended Southwest Texas State Teachers College, later known as Texas State University, from which her grandnephew Dees graduated many years later; taught school in Alaska, where no other member of our family has ever been; won local elections for a school board in Oklahoma, where she lived for many years, eventually chairing the board; read vociferously (in the 1980s she asked me to get a book for her in the UK that wasn’t available stateside in those pre-Amazon days, and I did); ran a bookstore; was an ardent Democrat in a highly Republican place; hosted exchange students, including some Japanese ones; had a taste for plain-speaking (as did Ken), dirty jokes and gag gifts — she once gave my mother two small planter figurines, a male with a long cactus for a phallus, and a female with two round cacti for mammaries; belonged to the Episcopal church; fancied cats but had dogs, too (I barely remember that dachshund); and probably much more I don’t know about.

I last saw her in October. I’m glad we were able to visit her a number of times these last few years. RIP, Aunt Sue.