Susan Fisher Willoughby, born in 1954, is the youngest of four children – late enough in the birth order to escape the harshest of the paternal abuse in the household but still young enough to be accepting of her mother’s next partner as a father figure. She grew up to emulate the strong, resilient helper characteristics of her mother.
Today, she is a registered nurse with a strong moral compass and a simple yardstick for happiness. She has a deep faith in God; cherishes her two children and six grandchildren; and has a job that allows her to make a daily difference in people’s lives. Plus – icing on the cake for her – she lives in a waterfront community in a rural area in the middle peninsula of Virginia where she enjoys the solace of country living, gardening, fishing, boating, and basking in the sunshine.
It wasn’t easy to achieve contentment. She describes her young self as both a dreamer and someone who was frequently bullied throughout her primary school years. She had difficulty maintaining friendships. But, she says she discovered that she could stand up for herself and often helped others similarly misunderstood.
When she was around nine years old, her “step” father surprised the family and moved them out of what she calls “the ghetto” — their rowhouse was to be condemned – to the Maryland suburbs. They moved into a newly built apartment with a spacious balcony, new furniture, and a freezer full of food. Her mother’s “tears of joy” expressed what, in hindsight, Susan can now see was relief, as it saved them from falling into lives of despair that the urban streets with their drugs, alcohol, and crime might have wrought. So many of the adults around them, including aunts and uncles, had already become trapped in that kind of life.
Through her mother’s line, Susan is an eighth-generation direct descendant of Capt. George Pointer. He was born into slavery but achieved nearly unheard-of success for a Black man of his time. Pointer’s granddaughter bought land on Dry Meadows in what is now Chevy Chase DC and began raising a family. The two-acre “compound” gave succor to four generations from the 1840s to the 1920s – a period that stretched from pre-Civil War through Reconstruction to Jim Crow.
The last generation to enjoy Dry Meadows included Susan’s grandmother, Rose Harris Conway, who was a child when the family was evicted so their land could be used to build a school and park for suburban white children. The family scattered in several directions, some with secure jobs and safe housing, others without.
Susan’s mother, Evelyn Conway Fisher, was one of 11 children born to Rose and her husband Thomas Conway Jr. It was this generation – the first to have never experienced the safety net that Dry Meadows had long provided for previous generations – who fell into “unhealthy behaviors and lifestyles.” The behaviors trickled down to thwart the lives of many of the 11 children from that union.
Along with the unhealthy lifestyles, many in that generation held onto racists beliefs that were designed to make Black people feel inferior. Susan recalls that when she declared she would go to college after graduation from Ballou High School in 1973, she was shut down by family members. “They said, ‘College? You’re not that smart!’ So that’s what was ingrained, you had to be really, really smart to go to college,” she said, meaning that they didn’t think Black people were smart enough. “There is truth in the saying ‘you learn what you live and live what you learn.’ ”
Susan said the stability achieved by moving out of the inner city helped her immediate family. Her siblings all went on to lead productive – if not unblemished – lives. She herself started on the path to college when, at age 22, another obstacle presented itself. She was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis (MG), a “devastating” chronic autoimmune disorder that causes debilitating muscle weakness.
It started with double vision that coincided with the conception of her first child, a son. She had married in her second year of college and became pregnant soon after. It took a year to be diagnosed due to her pregnant state, and then she endured a decade of cycling between acute crises and periods of stability. During that time she was frequently hospitalized and experienced severe weight loss due to a limited ability to chew. Meanwhile, she had a second child, a daughter, and her marriage unravelled due to her husband’s alcohol and drug addictions.
Finally, in fits and starts, she emerged to restart her life. Susan gives credit to the illness that prepared her for the life she now lives – what she sees as good coming from bad. For instance, negative experiences with hospital nurses who were insensitive and lacked medical knowledge was an impetus for her to become the kind of nurse she had needed. She recalls one night being so frustrated with the hospital care and lack of sleep that she vowed to God that if “He would deliver me from this predicament I would study to become a nurse. Of course, I realize now that was His plan all along,” she said.
Once periods of stability became more frequent she enrolled in nursing school. “It was a rough start,” she recalled. Relapses forced her to occasionally withdraw from classes, but she always went back. She said her faith in God smoothed the way – something she is certain she couldn’t have achieved by her mortal self.
The complexities were magnified because she was also raising children as a single parent. Plus, she encountered people who were not sympathetic. She recalls an instructor who, after the first week of the semester, called her up after class to discourage her from continuing because she had earned a “D” on the first quiz.
The instructor – who was white and she was the only Black student in the class – told her she would likely not do well in nursing and to think about another major. “I was naive, and she was the instructor,” Susan recalled. So she withdrew, falsely believing she wasn’t good or smart enough to succeed in nursing. But it did not end there. Prodded by what she believed was a clear message from God, she-enrolled, completed the rigorous program, and became a Registered Nurse. That was 37 years ago. Since then she has mastered nearly every type of hospital care specialty as a nurse.
By the time her children were in their early teens, she had an established career and the wherewithal to build a life for them. As a single mother, she found she had to be creative if she was to provide a well-rounded life for them – something she and her siblings did not always have. So one of her early decisions was to invest in a boat big enough for the three of them and a few of their friends to take trips on. What ensued were ideal vacations cruising the Potomac and surrounding harbors in Metropolitan areas. With that kind of fun, no one missed expensive hotels and fancy clothes, she said.
After her kids were no longer children, she married a second time but divorced after 14 years, in 2010. She learned life lessons from that, too. Meanwhile, her first husband has since worked through his addictions and re-established relationships with their kids. He is now a business owner – another victory she feels that comes from heaven.
In 2001, Susan switched to travel nursing, giving her the opportunity to take short-term assignments in a variety of places. She has worked up and down the East Coast, but always returns to her Piankatank River home, which she named “Goshen Shore.” She has no plans to retire anytime soon. “Retirement will only happen when the Lord Jesus calls me home,” she declared.