Dearest Suzie

An Interview with Suzie

May 10th, 2025  |  1 hr 2 mins

1960s america, addiction and family, american families, american memory, archival preservation, army wife, asbestos industry, base life, catholic upbringing, childhood in the 1950s, culture shock, dearest suzie, ethnographic interview, family interview, family legacy, family resilience, family storytelling, fort benning, fort bragg, fort ord, fort rucker, generational struggles, grandmother interview, helicopter pilot family, historical memory, historical podcast, hungarian american, inherit the stories, intergenerational trauma, legacy projects, love and loss, manville new jersey, marriage and war, memory and myth, mental health history, mental illness stigma, military deployment, military family, military spouse, munich germany, oral history, personal history, postwar america, ptsd, public anthropology, raising kids alone, remembering the past, sanford florida, shock therapy, small town america, southeast us history, southern and northern cultures, veteran family, veteran reflections, vietnam letters, vietnam war, war at home, women in war, working class families

In this special episode of Dearest Suzie, we step away from the battlefield and into the memory, voice, and wisdom of the woman who saved the letters. Recorded over Zoom, this episode features a heartfelt conversation with my grandmother, Susan “Mema” Lowie, about her life before, during, and after the Vietnam War. It’s a deeply personal portrait of a woman whose love, strength, and honesty made this entire project possible.

Mema talks candidly about her childhood in Manville, New Jersey, her parents’ struggles with mental illness and alcoholism, and her early marriage to Bill “Popi” Lowie. Together we revisit the places they lived—Fort Bragg, Fort Ord, Munich—and the years she raised three young boys while Popi flew missions in Vietnam. We talk about memory, marriage, the lingering cost of war, and what it means to tell the truth, even when it hurts.

This interview is about the things we inherit that aren't always written down: silence, resilience, pain, and love.