Susan Booth Bonnet Chermside

            We are gathered this morning to bear witness to our faith in the resurrection, the resurrection of all who are buried in Jesus Christ the Lord, and the resurrection of Susan Booth Bonnet Chermside.  Sue at died at home on Monday morning of cancer.  She would have been 90 on her next birthday.  We give thanks for Sue’s long and productive life.  We rejoice that for Sue all suffering is over and she is at rest in the bosom of her heavenly father.  Our love and sympathy are extended to Herbert and Chuck and Florence and Mary.

            Susan was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1915, an only child of Jacob Nicholas and Majorie Booth Bonnet.  In 1917, with her father working in a NJ munitions plant, Sue and her mother moved to Charlotte County, to live on South Isle, a farm owned by Sue’s maternal grandfather.  Growing up, her family lived in various central Virginia communities, while Sue’s mother served as a school principal and her father sold insurance.  As they say, all roads lead to Richmond, and she ended up here after graduating from Highland Springs High School.  Sue attended Westhampton College, but in the depths of the depression, she left college and went to work, following the death of her father.

            While attending Westhampton, she frequently visited her family’s home back in Charlotte County. On one such visit in 1932, she caught the eye of Daisy Chermside.  Daisy invited her to a dance that Friday night, and suggested she might want to meet her son Herbert, a student at the University of Virginia.  Sue asked, “Where is this boy now?”  Daisy said, “Upstairs, there, playing pool.”  Well, anyway, Sue came to the dance, and met Herbert Chermside.  They dated for four years before marrying in 1937, commencing a blessed and happy 68 year marriage that produced four children.

            Sue Chermside was one of the most remarkable women I have ever met. Hard to know where to begin.  The attributes of a capable and Godly woman, as enumerated in the book of Proverbs come to mind.

            Sue was an independent and self respecting woman who was also deeply committed to the covenant of marriage and a partnership with her husband.  She reared their four children, suffered with her husband when they lost their second born as an infant, and nursed Herbert in his illnesses.  At different times she managed up to eight acres, including a garden 60 by 100 feet, and more animals than the farmer in the Dell.  A devoted dog lover her whole life, for a time, Sue bred Springer Spaniels.  She raised chickens for meat and eggs and a herd of goats for milk and cheese, and of course canned all the vegetables for the winter. She designed two of their houses.  She sewed the children’s clothes.  She took care of her mother and her mother in law.

In her spare time Sue volunteered and worked for the Girl Scouts. For a time she worked as a court reporter. Later she was the executive for the Charlotte County chapter of the American Red Cross.  For 20 years she was the secretary to the manager of a district office of Tinnerman Products.

A lifelong lover of genealogy, Sue eventually became a professional genealogist.  In addition to researching and documenting her own family tree, Sue became a genealogical consultant hired gun.

Sue was an active woman.  She loved the out of doors.  She thought nothing of planning and leading a multi week, 19 state cross country camping trip for the family.  In their 68 years of marriage, Sue missed having a flower and vegetable garden only three springs – two during WW II, while she traveled with Herbert in the Navy, and this current spring.  She loved to cross country ski.  She was an excellent swimmer.

As her daughter Mary said, Sue didn’t know how to do anything half-way.

In 1972, Sue suffered a stroke.  Her local hospital didn’t have a rehab program, so Sue read a book and designed her own rehabilitation. Within a few months she was back at work and then on a vacation to Puerto Rico.  The stroke interrupted her course of study in art at the Rochester Institute of Technology.  But she still became an accomplished painter.

Sue was a writer.  She expanded her genealogical reports to include commentaries on the manner of life of the antecedents of whom she wrote.  After moving to Summer Hill, here in Richmond, she joined a memoirs writing group.  She was working on her magnum opus at the time of her death, A Booth Retrospective, a study of her family over the last six generations.

Sue was a woman of profound faith and spiritual insight.  At age 12, she joined a Methodist Church, but wrote, “My experience there was in no way rewarding.”  Eventually, she joined the church of her husband, and found a rewarding spiritual home in the Presbyterian Church, spending her last 13 years here as a member of the Bon Air Presbyterian Church.  She sang in the choir and taught in the church school.  She supported the church when it was faithful to God’s call for justice, and spoke out if it failed to do so.  She was a careful and thoughtful recipient of her pastor’s sermons.  She knew her church doctrine, but also knew that the life of Christian discipleship was what Christian faith is all about.  She loved the old hymns of her youth but never, never thought the church ought to stand still or look backward.

Sue’s diagnosis of cancer didn’t stop her.  She kept moving forward.  Sue confidently was ready to be “goin home”.  She did yearn to finish her book and feared she would not.  And she said her cancer disrupted her plan to be there to care for beloved Herbert in his last days.  We give thanks for the joy and love and life we have been privileged to share with this loving, faithful, intelligent, caring, curious, hard-working, dog-loving, resourceful, most remarkable woman.

Sue is survived by her husband, Herbert Brooke Chermside Jr.; three children, H.B. "Chuck" Chermside III and his wife, Linda of Richmond, Florence C. Wilbik of West Virginia and Mary C. Flanagan and her husband, Christopher of Massachusetts; another daughter, Majorie, died in infancy.  Sue is also survived by two granddaughters, Laura J. Wilbik Dill and Courtney B. Elio; five grandsons, Michael B. Chermside, R. Alexander Chermside, Brent E. Chermside, J. Daniel Wilbik and Dalton C. Flanagan; and three great-grandchildren, Joseph D. Wilbik, Danielle Marie Wilbik and Benjamin Azariel Chermside; and her new but dear friend and caregiver in her last days, Mary Kelsey.

Having gathered for our mutual support and comfort, and to hear the witness of the Scriptures, let us worship God:

R. Charles Grant

Bon Air Presbyterian Church

May 13, 2005