This Chapel Hillian in her eighties remains young at heart, sharing her light with others everywhere she goes
By Laura Zimmerman Whayne | Photo by John Michael Simpson
“Who is your yellow person?” It’s all over social media these days. A yellow person is someone who brings you sunshine. My first reaction was, “Me! Me! Me! I want to be someone’s yellow!” I had been for most of my life anyway. But then I realized even yellow souls need other yellow souls. We yellows can get emptied fast unless we are around other yellows. I decided to approach my days noticing other yellows. It’s a nice process to pause and ponder, “Who makes me feel lighter and happier whenever I am in their presence?” Sometimes our most yellow moments happen with strangers. We just feel better after a wave, a hello, a smile. We all need more of this.
The world needs to hear about the yellows out there who make a difference in so many lives. My little spark of an idea has been brewing amid some of my own difficult times. And so I will shine a spotlight on the yellows I meet here and there in our little town of Chapel Hill. The ones who bring us sparkle when we are struggling. Here I introduce my first yellow to you. – Laura Zimmerman Whayne
Nursing a significant, long-lasting injury, I went to the gym as much as I could. As I was on the mat doing my thing, there was my yellow. But she wasn’t just my yellow. She seemed to be everyone’s yellow. And that’s what yellows do.
Meet Suzie Blunk, although her oldest friends call her “Tucks.”
Suzie is petite – maybe 5 feet, 1 inches tall. She wears black knee-high socks and always has some sort of funny political T-shirt on and black shorts. Her hair is white with bangs straight across her forehead. She is adorable.
Suzie is at the UNC Wellness Center at Meadowmont every single day walking around the track with her group of friends – and that is a big group. When she’s not walking, Suzie is on the stationary bike. Just yesterday I got to the gym, and she had already done more than 5 miles on the bike. This may not seem like a big deal. But what I have not mentioned yet is that Suzie is 88 years old! EIGHTY-EIGHT years old.
The first time I met her, I felt drawn in. There is no such thing as a stranger to Suzie. It is magic to watch how every person walks away from her smiling and laughing. It is a gift. Suzie is a yellow.
So who is this woman wearing a black T-shirt that says in bold letters “Racism is an illness” on the front and on the back, “Are you sick?” She is a ball of light and a bit of a pistol yet kind and gentle.
Suzie met my request to get to know her better over coffee with giggles and grace. I learned quickly that you shouldn’t mistake Suzie’s kindness for being mousy. No, Suzie is bold and has this ability to be loving and brutally honest at the same moment. She was born in 1936 in New Albany, Indiana. A few years later, Suzie’s mother had a stroke when giving birth to her younger brother, Joey. Her mother was away for a year after that stroke, and she was raised with her very loving grandmother and aunt. It was hard, but she felt loved.
When her mother returned, Suzie remembered people staring at her mother’s face, which she described as “being pulled to the side.” Suzie would get so mad. She knew not to say anything rude. But she did give people the dirtiest looks.
Suzie had this spark of rebelliousness. She was the one getting in trouble at school for drinking fountain sodas instead of being in class. Being a rule breaker would carry her through the many twists and turns in her life.
Suzie’s mother would say to her, “Baby, you have to be strong,” so Suzie would not cry. Suzie now knows it may have helped her in life if she had learned to cry. Even though her mother was tough and didn’t talk about her own feelings, she was a cuddly teddy bear.
Suzie’s eyes grew sad as she talked about losing her mother. Her mom died on an operating table in a Winston-Salem hospital. Suzie had been her mother’s fierce protector, and I could tell that allowing the surgery to go forward still weighed on her spirit.
At that time, Suzie had been married for many years, with two sons in high school. Her kitchen sink window’s view was the hospital where her mother died. Suzie felt trapped and needed to just get away from that window. By the time she couldn’t take it anymore, her sons had finished and graduated from high school. Her husband did not want to move, so Suzie and her husband lived apart. After Suzie had some time to heal, she returned, but the couple decided not to reconcile. She had gotten married at 19, as it was just “what you did back then.” Now in her early 40s, she wanted to get her teaching degree, so she did! Suzie became the most sought-after substitute teacher in Winston-Salem. Suzie was not a wallower; she made big changes with determination and action.
Suzie decided to team up with two of her girlfriends and formed a business, Triumvirate Homemakers Inc., that would carry them well into their 70s. Suzie, Jean and Mary would buy homes and fix them up themselves. They had the time of their lives working, traveling and making sure their grown kids were good. Suzie laughed, telling me about her red Toyota Celica and how it was not the smartest for a blonde to have a red sports car. She got many, many speeding tickets. “I always had fun,” she recalls. “And I always got caught.”
Suzie said when she grew up, “you just learned to make do” and that she basically has kept the “make do” motto her entire life. She was OK with getting divorced in her 40s, even when it wasn’t as common as today. “We were all doing things we wanted,” she says. “We were free. We didn’t have to ask anyone for anything. I didn’t like being told what to do just because I was a woman. And well, it took me time to learn how to communicate better.”
She stayed strong and fit her whole life. When she was 50, she ran the New York City Marathon in 4 hours and 48 minutes. She says she would have run it faster if she had not gotten lost in Central Park. She’s run plenty of half-marathons, too, which were “just easy.”
Suzie’s secret to staying young at heart and fulfilled? Her children, grandchildren, animals and community of friends. And, of course, kindness.
An entire book could be written about her love for history and her political views. Or her ability to just make do while doing. But I shall end this with the vision of her little bell on her kitchen counter that says, “press for Champagne.” Suzie says that another one of her secrets to staying young is having her one glass of “sparkly” – Champagne – and a handful of walnuts at 4 p.m. every single day.
I like to imagine that her mother joins her for this daily ritual and that Suzie then carries that love with her into the world every day. I have a feeling that Suzie’s mother would have been another yellow I would have loved to meet. I couldn’t help but ring her little Champagne bell before I left.
