A Remembrance of Susan Rankin by Jasper Craven
On a perfect summer day in late August of 2022, I met Susan Rankin on the bank of the Passumpsic River, in St. Johnsbury. It was the first I’d seen her since the pandemic and we caught up for hours, seated at a picnic table with pizza from Kingdom Crust. I’d brought my then-new girlfriend, Lauren, on Susan’s insistence, even though the reason for our gathering was somewhat grim. We were supposed to discuss her obituary.
Susan was then in her early 70s, and for much of her life she’d been sick. Shortly after she moved to Vermont, in the mid 1980s, she’d been in a bad car accident that left her with a brain injury. In the decades since, she’d struggled mightily with migraines and other comorbidities, yet remained insatiably curious and exceptionally witty. She was also deeply caring.
For the first eight years of my life, Susan lived across my driveway, in an apartment she rented from my parents on Old West Road, in West Barnet. During my early childhood, she took care of me a lot. Nominally, she was my baby-sitter, but she always treated me like family. I don’t think she ever charged my parents for her services, nor did she gripe at any last-minute requests for care.
I was an energetic flower child, prone to bursts of wild dancing in the nude and other forms of joyful chaos. Susan handled me with patience, letting my wild side thrive while also imparting some manners and responsibility. She had me haul things to her shed and help with other chores, but also spoiled me rotten. She read to me, took me to the playground, introduced me to figure skating. She also cooked for me a lot, reminding me at the river that among all the creative dishes she made I was most obsessed with a simple peasant meal: creamed tuna and peas.
At Christmas each year, Susan would shower me with presents. But she also tempered my materialism by insisting we purchase presents and wrap them for less fortunate families. She also drilled into me the value of thank you cards — which has served me well through the years.
As I grew up, Susan continued to be in my life. She read books to my elementary and middle school classes, picked me up after high school, and called regularly while I was in college. We talked about life, politics, television, and religion.
Rarely would she dwell on her own acute medical issues. Instead, she wanted to know how I was doing, an instinct she turned to even during our riverside chat. I was there to learn more about Susan’s life so that, one day, I could properly chronicle it for her obituary. Still, she couldn’t help but spend the majority of our time discussing the particulars of mine, regaling Lauren with many tales of my mischievous youth.
As the sun started to set, Lauren and I walked Susan to her car, said goodbye, and went our separate ways. We hadn’t discussed her obituary much, but I assumed we’d carve out another time to do so. We spoke a good deal more after that, but neither of us ever broached the obituary again, hoping, perhaps, that such evasion would forestall the inevitable. Then, on January 3rd 2025, Susan died at the age of 76.
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Obituary
Susan P. Rankin was born on September 8th, 1948. She grew up in the rural hamlet of Hiram, Maine, with her parents Albert P. Rankin and Helen E.(Brown) Rankin. She also had a younger brother, Alan.
Susan attended high school at Fryeburg Academy, in Maine, then appears to have spent some time in college before working for about a decade as a medical secretary. At age 30, Susan heard the call of the ministry. She completed her undergraduate studies at UMaine at Orono before entering the Bangor Theological Seminary. She graduated from this latter institution in 1982 with a Master of Divinity.
Susan then served at several churches under the umbrella of the United Church of Christ, a socially liberal mainline Protestant denomination with New England roots. Its flock came to encompass three of Susan’s favorite politicians: Barack Obama, Howard Dean, and Jim Douglas.
In 1982, Susan served as the Interim Pastor at a church in North Haven — one of the Maine’s most remote islands, with a wintertime population of just 400. At the end of that year, she was appointed Associate Pastor at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, Connecticut. A news article announcing Susan’s appointment noted that she would be spending much of her time focused on youth programs. It was this work, she told the paper, that excited her the most.
In October 1985, Susan landed as interim pastor at the United Church of Christ, in Greensboro, where she served for a year. She also served as an interim pastor at Hampden Congregational Church in Hampden, Maine. Before the first day of her dream job, settled pastor of the United Church of Strafford, Vermont, she was rear-ended in a motor vehicle accident and suffered a chronic brain injury. At the congregation’s behest, she struggled to serve as best she could until they could call another pastor, but she was never able to serve as a full-time parish minister again.
Still, Susan remained active in the Vermont Conference of the United Church of Christ. She served as head of the Nominating Committee, and contributed significantly to the Ministerial Standing Committee, the Department of Mission, and Department of Christian Education.
“I sometimes felt that Susan was a modern-day Job,” reflected her former pastor in Barnet, Reverend Howard Gaston. “She had lost so much in her life and yet continued to have a faith that she tried to share with others and for her own life struggles.”
He concluded: “I know that like Job, ‘the lord has restored her fortunes and gave her twice as much as she had before’ in God’s loving presence.”
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Remembrance Continued
Susan spent much of the 1990s volunteering in the community when her health allowed it. She was an active ally and, later, board member, for the Brain Injury Alliance of Vermont. She also helped lead support groups for people with head injuries at her two favorite hospitals: NVRH and Dartmouth-Hitchcock. (She would frequently illustrate for me the caring and humane staff she dealt with in both locales.)
Susan’s brain injury made it difficult for her to grasp technology, but she loved keeping in touch with the ones she loved. And so, in the early aughts, she bought a newfangled email machine. Her most frequent pen pal was her brother, Alan, who, in 2004, became homeless in Boston due to a debilitating mental health condition.
Alan corresponded with Susan from a computer in the library, which he visited often to check in on the season of his beloved Boston Red Sox. Like Susan, Alan was uncommonly kind and tender despite his struggles. He was quieter than she was, but nonetheless caring.
Alan was often resistant to Susan’s help, though she convinced him to visit once a year or so for a “vacation” marked by hot showers, good food, and fun outings. Later the family of my close friend, Ezra Racine, offered Alan a job at Eagle Eye Farm, a residential care facility near Lake Willoughby.
He worked there until his physical and mental health became too compromised to continue. Eagle Eye Farm helped Alan for months after he ceased to be their employee. The whole Alexander family – particularly John, the patriarch – was extremely kind and generous.
Susan tirelessly coordinated efforts to keep Alan housed and cared for. After he had a stroke, she also expertly coordinated his care. Susan participated in the National Alliance on Mental Illness Family Support Group while Alan was alive. After he passed, in November 2017, she continued to provide support for others. She also wrote his touching obituary, and dusted off her pastoral skills to plan his funereal.
The pandemic hit Susan hard. She was hoping to start a grief support group for people who had lost loved ones, but her own health was deteriorating. Among other things, she developed a tremor that interfered with her ability to use an iPad for video conferencing into meetings for the Brain Injury Alliance. “Susan was an advocate who tirelessly gave her support and unwavering resolve to make Vermont a better place for the brain injury community,” the organization recently stated.
Despite her mounting health challenges, Susan took pride in keeping her check book balanced, and her bedside table stacked high with books. She loved to read, especially memoirs and biographies. She also subscribed to, and read, many magazines. If she caught wind that I was writing for a new publication, she would often subscribe to it. Once, when one of these publications didn’t pay me for months, she angrily canceled her subscription. I often joked that her voracious reading habits were single-handedly keeping my industry alive.
I last saw Susan a few days before Christmas on a short stay in a rehabilitation facility. She was clearly weak physically, but maintained the funny spark I’d come to adore.
She told my mother and me about the strangest new turn in her health struggles: hearing the same Christmas song play incessantly in her hand. She told it in her classic way, finding humor and resilience in an objectively terrible situation.
Not long after, Susan returned home and died of natural causes in her own home, as she had wished.
Susan is predeceased by her parents, her brother, Alan, her dog Clooney to whom she was devoted, and many dear friends. She is survived by close friends she considered family, including me, my folks, Kathy Gale, Betty Keller, Bob Hawes, Allyson Crawford, Jeanne Eisner, and her old neighbors on Old West Road.
There will be a party in remembrance of Susan on Sat. June 7th in Peacham.
Please contact Bess O’Brien at bobrien@pshift.com to attend.
Donations in Susan’s memory may be made to Doctors without Borders and/or Brain Injury Alliance of Vermont.