Dearest Suzie
The Story of An American Inheritance
Displaying all 2 Episode of Dearest Suzie with the tag “oral history”.
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Fish, Pharmaceuticals, & Phil | All Episodes
May 24th, 2025 | 35 mins 11 secs
addiction and recovery, american family studies, anthropology of bureaucracy, baker act, belief in outsiders, bureaucratic failure, carceral institutions, central florida, child protective services (cps), child welfare system, conservative america, daytime tv culture, department of children and families (dcf), dr. phil, estranged families, ethnographic writing, exploitation in media, family court system, family dynamics, family narrative, family separation, first-person story, fix-it culture, florida families, florida politics, florida social services, foster care, foster system reform, generational cycles, government accountability, grandparent caregivers, institutional distrust, institutional neglect, intergenerational trauma, investigative storytelling, juvenile justice, juvenile mental health, kinship care, longform journalism, media influence, memoir podcast, mental health, moral economies, motherhood and addiction, narrative podcast, narratives of care, nonprofit oversight, north orlando neighborhoods, ocala national forest, oral history, orlando suburbs, parasocial relationships, parenting challenges, personal essay, political anthropology, pop culture and politics, poverty in america, public anthropology, public appeals for help, public trust in media, reality television, republican governance, sanford florida, social commentary, social safety net, social services reform, social systems analysis, state and subjectivity, storytelling podcast, strongman politics, systemic injustice, trump era politics, tv psychology, working class struggles
In this personal narrative episode of Dearest Suzie, we step away from the war letters and into a birthday dinner in suburban Florida—a setting that slowly reveals a decades-spanning story of intergenerational trauma, systemic failure, and the quiet desperation that leads ordinary people to seek help from extraordinary places.
What begins as a quiet evening with Mary, an 81-year-old matriarch, becomes a window into the life of her granddaughter Jessica and the four children caught in a cycle of addiction, poverty, and state neglect. As Mary asks the narrator to write to Dr. Phil on her behalf, the request opens a floodgate of stories—of parental abuse, foster care instability, broken judicial processes, and bureaucracies that punish the people trying hardest to help.
This is a story about how systems fail families, how good intentions become entangled in red tape, and why, when institutions collapse, people turn to outsiders—TV doctors, political strongmen, or anyone who feels like they might finally listen.
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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.