Sue and her older brother and sister were descendants of a paternal great-grandfather who emigrated from Sweden, arriving in New York on a ship that sank in the harbor, as family lore has it. This ancestor wound his way to Texas, where he went into raising cattle and buying property, an enterprise so successful that the family now owns the second largest cattle ranch in America.

It was wartime. At the end of her first year of teaching preschoolers, in July 1944, Sue went on a blind date with a handsome young Army Air Corps officer, Ross Woodard Allen, who happened to have grown up “just around the corner” from her in Orange. Their parents knew each other, and Ross’s brother had dated Sue’s sister, but the two had never met before.  Ross, having graduated from Choate, Penn, and the Wharton School, had already been in the service for four years.

“Instant attraction” is how Sue describes their meeting.  One week later, Ross proposed to Sue; she said yes, and four months later, in November 1944, they were married at Sue’s home in Orange.  It was a brief courtship, but the marriage lasted 60 years.

For the remaining months of the war, the newlyweds resided at Ross’s base, in Warner Robins. Less than a year later, the war was over, and Ross began what was to be a lifelong career with Saco-Lowell, a textile machinery company. Ross and Sue moved to Saco, Maine, “one little bitty town.”  There, the population soon increased by one with the arrival of Woodard Ross Allen, forever after to be known as Woody. His first two names were a reversal of Ross’s first and middle names.

“Ross didn’t want a ‘junior’ so that’s what we did,” said Sue.

In years to come, Woody would be joined by four sisters; Dorothy, Sandra, Paige and Andrea.

What Will We Give Them for a Wedding Present?

That was the question Sue and Ross asked themselves when the wedding invitation arrived in 1953.  The bride and groom to be were Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy, a close friend of Ross’s from Choate.  The Allens were unable to attend the wedding because of a new baby’s arrival, but searched their minds for a present.

“We had been given two kitchen clocks for wedding presents, so we gave them one,” Sue recalls.  “A few years later, when Jackie gave that tour of the White House on television, I kept looking for that clock, but I never saw it!”

In time, Ross’s career took the family south, where they lived for many years, in Southern Pines and Greensboro, N.C., and Greenville, S.C.

“I loved it there,” says Sue.  “My goodness, I could get help for 25 cents an hour, and that was pretty nice with all those babies. We took up golf there, and had a good life.”

After Ross retired, the Allens pulled up stakes and moved north to Duxbury, where they would live, over time, in four different houses.  The first was on Wadsworth Lane, the next on Powder Point, until they finally found one on the water.

“That had been Frannie Churchill’s father-in-law’s house,” said Sue.

Then, after the family nest emptied, they moved to a smaller house. At one point, Ross and a friend bought a marina on the Cape.

“He’d always wanted to get involved with boats. “It was very hard work, and eventually he sold his share, but he enjoyed the partnership with Lloyd Salt, a Duxbury ‘old-timer’.”

Coming to The Village

“Because we had a house here in Duxbury, we could watch The Village develop,” says Sue.  “Then when Ross was becoming disabled with hip problems, we came here, in 2002.”  Ross passed away in 2007, but Sue still lives in there amid her comfortable furnishings and family photographs.

Sue has made a number of college connections at The Village.

“When I came here Kathryn Smith came up to me and said, ‘I know you, you gave me your pin,’” referring to the college tradition whereby a senior passes her college pin on to an incoming freshman. “(Former resident) Peg Barlow lived in the room next to mine.”

Recently, Sue asked a new neighbor his name.  When he replied, she asked, “Is that R-H-O-A-D-S?”  Surprised, he said, “How did you know that?”  “I said, ‘My best friend at college was Suzanne Rhoads.’”  “That’s my sister!” he said. Small world!

Sue remains close to her large family.  Woody, a company manager, lives in Charlotte, N.C. (“He loves to sing.”)  Daughter Dorothy Arnold is manager of the Coldwell Banker office in Duxbury; daughter Sandra Fleming, also a Duxbury resident, recently painted the mural in the children’s section of the Westwinds Bookshop on Depot Street.  Daughters Paige Carter and Andrea Theriault live in Maine. There are also 10 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

In 2011, Sue’s family gave her a 90th birthday surprise party at The Village.  Like all hosts of such events, they worried about keeping it a secret from Sue. They were rewarded by her look of utter amazement and delight when she entered the Meeting Room to see the sea of friends’ and relatives’ faces, and hear the cries of “Surprise!”