The Way We Were: Family, Friends and Philanthropy

When Susie O’Quinn went on a blind date with Robert, the man she would eventually marry, she wasn’t expecting to also spend the day with his mother, sister, her father-in-law and his three best friends. But that’s exactly what happened.

“I’m thinking, ‘What kind of a date is this?’” Susie recalled, laughing. “It was a big first date, especially when you didn’t know each other at all. We met when I opened the front door.”

Susie and Robert were set up by a mutual friend – one of Susie’s sorority sisters. With Susie newly divorced, her friend was always trying to fix her up with someone. One day, she called to fix her up with Robert.

Though she had a lovely time with Robert and his family on that fateful first date in 1977, she proceeded with caution for the next three years while they maintained a long-distance relationship while Robert completed his law degree. Without the benefits of modern technology – without text messages or FaceTime or cell phones – the pair had to find more traditional ways to keep in contact.

“We wrote letters and we talked on the phone on Sundays – because it was cheaper to do long-distance on Sundays – just for a little while because I was a school teacher and he was a student, neither of us had any money,” Susie said.

During that time, Susie continued teaching second grade at North Shore Elementary School.

“It’s a good age,” Susie said. “They’re still kind of babies, but they can do things for themselves.”

Robert and Susie dated for another year and a half after Robert graduated from law school before they got married. They’ve been married for 44 years now. Susie kept teaching for another couple of years until their daughter was born. Robert legally adopted Susie’s daughter from her first marriage when she was six years old, and with this new addition, they were now a family of four.

Lifelong Friendships

Robert isn’t the longest relationship Susie’s had, though. A lifelong Jacksonville resident, Susie graduated from Samuel Wolfson School for Advanced Studies in 1971 and has a tight-knit group of friends who graduated with her. Some of those friendships stretch back even further to first grade at South San Jose Elementary School.

Planning their 10-year high school reunion marked the beginning of regular get-togethers for her circle of friends. As everyone got married and had children, busy lives and busy schedules made it difficult to plan frequent meetings, and the group switched to quarterly meetups, then once or twice a year.

As the years passed, conversations at these meetups shifted from babies and toddlers to teenagers and graduations. A few years ago, as their 70th birthdays approached, Susie floated the idea of a big birthday trip for them all, which they spent in a house up in the Idaho mountains.

These friendships mean the world to Susie. “It’s so special,” she said. “It really is.”

Family Life

Today, Susie’s oldest daughter, Christi, recently celebrated her 50th birthday.

“It’s a big birthday,” Susie acknowledged, adding with a laugh, “It’s a big birthday for her mother.”

Christie is an assistant principal at an elementary school in the area. Her younger daughter, Katherine, lives in Virginia with her husband.

Susie and Robert live in the same house she grew up in, the same house her father built for his family. Her mother moved into a condo after her father passed away suddenly at just 62 years old and Robert and Susie ended up buying her childhood home from her mother.

“We have been in that house since 1982,” Susie said.

Susie had the rare opportunity to raise her family in the same house she grew up in and she said now and then, she would see flashes of herself as a child in that home.

“[Usually] when I hear myself say something that sounds like my mother,” Susie said, chuckling.

Robert retired last year, and they are enjoying a slower life now. Though she’s not a big traveler, Susie traveled to Paris with Katherine last fall to celebrate Katherine’s 40th birthday. Originally, Susie had intended to gift the trip to Katherine and her husband, but Katherine invited her to join her instead.

“It was once in a lifetime for me,” Susie said.

Robert and Susie enjoy spending time on their boat, cruising on the river, and anchoring it to have lunch or dinner. They’re both heavily involved with the Salvation Army of Northeast Florida: she with the Women’s Auxiliary and he on the advisory board. Susie is also a volunteer with the Florida House in Washington, D.C. In her free time, Susie enjoys exercising – yoga, pilates, and dance. She is also in the middle of planning her 55th high school reunion next year.

“We’re going to start having meetings together,” Susie said. “I’m just always, I’m always working on things like that.”