She touched so many lives. It's the sort of cliche she would despise, but it's true. This is a space where those of us she was important to can remember her, wax nostalgic, or just babble. If you have something you want to say here, just email it to me, and I will post it.

Rick Crawford

I'll take My Aunt Susie for $1000, Alex.

When Susie turned 50, she threw a party at her house in Unadilla, NY. Because this was Susie, this was no ordinary party.

Susie hosted her own version of the game show Jeopardy, in which we were all contestants and she was Alex Trebek. And because this was Susie, this was no ordinary game of Jeopardy.

This was Jeo-Peppard-y.

Susie didn't do ordinary. One of my earliest memories is being a child of five or six in my aunt Nan's living room with all of my cousins. Susie was talking to the adults in the room about something that I couldn't even begin to understand and was the most fascinating thing I'd ever heard. I stood there open-mouthed as she held us at rapt attention, her hands together at the fingertips in a steeple formation near her mouth; a look I would come to understand as the Susie's-making-a-point-so-you-better-listen-up look.

We grow up and we learn we're not supposed to stand agape when listening to people speak. But in the company of Susie, among the most brilliant, creative people I've ever met, it was always tempting to do just that. Susie's creativity was inspirational, and at turns made me want to be a writer, an actor, and an inventor. I really didn't care what I would be as long as I could tap into the same reservoir of genius that she seemed to drink from freely.

She shared the water. Not content to play games packaged and shrink-wrapped from the likes of Milton-Bradley, playing a game with Susie was something much more. At Susie's 50th, we were instructed to play as our favorite celebrity, and that's exactly what we did. I was Billy Joel. Billy Joel lost quite spectacularly.

No matter - I was in Susie's world, and that was where I wanted to be. It's where I still strive to be.

Nan Carr

The Peppard sisters were extraordinary. We had powers that others did not have. Susie's power was that she could fly. Jane and I could breath underwater.

I remember trying to fly off of short hills but to no avail. The only thing that kept me from being despondent was that I could breath underwater. Susie could not.

However, I remember one day Susie's wings didn't work. She was climbing our copper beech tree out in the back yard. It was a very tall tree. She decided to fly to a lower branch.

We never knew what happened the day her wings didn't work. She landed on the ground. She thought she was dead and wondered if our father would cut down the copper beech in her memory.

Of course she wasn't dead, and to my knowledge, the copper beech tree is still standing.

Now I picture Susie soaring high, with freedom and grace. And having a wonderful time.

We lived in Cromwell, CT. Susie was the ringleader. Her plan was to go into the woods, away from our parents and PLAY WITH FIRE! Jane and I were five and Susie was seven.

We all carried some matches and walked into the woods until we found the perfect spot. We sat down and one by one lit the matches. At Susie's suggestion, we decided to not only light the matches but START A FIRE!

We were successful. VERY successful. Too successful. The fire spread and grew. We got scared. We tried in vain to stomp it out but we couldn't. We ran back to our house and had to tell our parents. They in turn had to call the fire department. It was awfully scary for three small children. None of us ever played with matches again.

Susie and Jane and I used to go to Nova Scotia with our parents every second summer. We would go for about six weeks. One summer when we were about 10 and 12, Susie decided we should all write stories. And whenever Susie suggested something, Jane and I did it. I remember my story. The heroine was May Thut. The famous line from my story was, "How long has it been May Thut? 10 years?"

When Susie co-authored the book President Kissinger, she used Mai Thutt (different spelling) as a character in her book and the "famous line" in her book so Jane and I would know that she really wrote part of the book.

Kate Wasserman

I'm a procrastinator, is the thing. I've been meaning to write a journal since she died. Bought the notebook and everything. But then somehow never got around to writing in it. Likewise, I wanted to write something for this page, and here it is 12:30pm on March 29, and I'm just getting around to it.

How do I condense everything I know and feel about her into a pithy little webpage? How do I express the depth of the impact she had on me in an anecdote or two? We had our own dialect, for god's sake. (And because she was who she was, and to a great extent, she made me who I am, not only did that dialect sort of evolve naturally, but we also spent time, years after it was born, analyzing the rules of its grammar and phonetics. Seriously.)

So, what do I remember? I remember getting ready to start 9th grade, and she made the deal with me that if I would take Latin, she would buy me a computer. I asked her if I would like Latin. She said, "No, you'll hate it. But it's good for you." Being the geek-in-progress that I was, I agreed to the deal and took two years of Latin. And yes, it was good for me.

The computer led to lots more memories. The first one was a TI99-4A. She taught me Basic, and helped me write my first game, "Global Thermonuclear War." (Yes, I stole it from WarGames.) A couple of computers later, we started playing Ultima and Infocom games together. We were a great team, each of us coming up with ideas that would never occur to the other. We would have marathon playing sessions with a requisite snack menu of Doritos and black cherry soda. I guess the longest session we had was after I'd dropped out of high school. We played through the night, and as it started to get light, she realized that she had to be at work in a couple of hours, so we stopped, she had a bath (never a shower, of course), got dressed, and went off to work.

I think those examples are the perfect evidence that a mother can be a parent and a friend. As my parent, she made me take Latin, no matter how much she knew I wouldn't like it. As my best friend, she played computer games with me all night.

The thought that she won't be here to help me raise my own kids is a source of immeasurable pain to me. But the knowledge that she provided me with such a wonderful example to work from is a tremendous comfort. I hope I can be a tenth the mother she was.

Hal Wasserman

The thing is, no one loves you the way your mother does, and I (selfishly, childishly perhaps) will miss that most of all. The love I speak of is the non-conditional love which refused to see wrong in me. No matter who or what I encountered in life, Susan was the anchor who always was there to tell me I was all right. I was not a fool. I wasn't a bad person. I had not made a mistake, or if I had, I was only human. If I wanted someone to yell at me and make a fuss, I would have to look elsewhere (I think we all know where).

Our minds were quite similar, or, at least, we had much in common, especially in terms of our sense of humor and where her and my bizarre imaginations would go. Kate says she and Susan had their own dialect; well, the dialect Susan and I spoke-how we played with language in our everyday exchanges-this dialect would be Greek to anyone but a very small circle of people. Indeed, people would have thought we were crazy. A couple of examples? Cairfloontalass. Anyone? No? That's Susan and Hal speak for coffee (a vital staple of Susan's existence). How about Rat Bang? I'll bet that one might even give Kit pause (although perhaps not), and she lives there (Red Bank).

But the true embodiment of what Susan and I had resides in the colorful personages of the Count, Mr. Duck, and Robinson Crusoe, who used to sit on the back of Susan's chaise. The Count is known to anyone who has seen "Sesame Street." Mr. Duck is the Count's boyfriend. A piece of cardboard which is attached to him in fact announces him to be "Hanks the Goose," a product of the Beanie Baby line. Nevertheless, under our roof he was Mr. Duck. Robinson Crusoe is from The New Yorker. There had been a cartoon linking Crusoe with the "Survivor" craze, because in the background of the picture, a camera crew frenziedly records the event. We removed the picture from the magazine, mounted the page on a piece of cardboard, and Robinson Crusoe joined the Count and Mr. Duck on the back of the chaise. Robinson Crusoe (or simply "Robinson") was a very pious character, frequently appalled by the affair between the Count and Mr. Duck. Anything even vaguely immoral upset him, leading him to suddenly speak up in admonishment. Both Susan and I provided their voices. The voices of the Count and Robinson were indistinguishable (although their personalities were quite different), and were simply deeper variants of our own. Neither fellow was terribly bright. Mr. Duck could not speak. He merely quacked. It was not the sort of quack an ordinary duck would make. The sounds Mr. Duck (or, if you please, Susan and I) made sounded more like a car horn. We heard from there gentlemen very often, although never in the presence of company we felt it might confuse or distress.

We also occasionally heard from an invisible, albeit persistent, would be guest by the name of Axe Man. His voice was also indistinguishable from the Count's and Robinson's. Axe Man wanted one thing: to come in. Of course, Susan and I wouldn't let him in. He tried to fool us into letting him in, but fortunately he was not very bright, and very clumsy in his attempted deceptions. He never got in.

Needless to say, the Count, Mr. Duck, and Robinson Crusoe are still very much with me, and retain prominent positions in the household, although they are in my bedroom now. I don't hear from them as often as I used to, but they are by no means silenced. I have several 12-inch movie monster action figures (available from Sideshow Toys), and they speak occasionally. I'm sure Susan would have enjoyed hearing from them and would no doubt have contributed her vocal talent to the mix. Mind you, I don't know how good a Bela Lugosi impression she could have done.

Susan was always fun to watch and discuss movies with. Altho she didn't like horror movies, there were still movies we both enjoyed. People will be surprised to read that she liked Sergio Leone's Clint Eastwood westerns. She especially liked Lee Van Cleef's character in "For a Few Dollars More." She was never able to convince me to watch any Judy Garland movies with her. And don't tell anyone, but once Susan and I smoked pot and watched "Vertigo."

Susan and I (and also Kit) loved the Neelam, an Indian restaurant in Middletown. We always got the same delicious things: Chicken Tikka Masala and Malai Kofta.

Susan was a writer. You will find some of her writings here at this website. I also am a writer. I often showed her the things I wrote--even some of my truly decadent works (although I spared her the really spicy parts. She was, after all, my mother).

When Kate and I were kids, Susan used to make all sorts of delightful board games for us. She also designed some of our Halloween costumes-in particular little Kate's Batman costume and me as Mr. Spock. She used to make two desserts which Kate and I always gobbled up with voracious delight: chocolate cookies and the magnificent Denver Pudding. Hopefully the recipes for these two will be added to this website.

I have said that Susan loved me unconditionally and was always supportive, no matter what happened. To illustrate this, I will conclude with a line from a very silly but apt song of mine, which Susan liked very much: "When everything goes doo-doo, no one comes through like you do." I won't give you the next line, which is entirely too silly for anyone, except for Kate (and again perhaps Kit) to appreciate.

That's the thing, you see. There were very, very silly places the imaginations of Susan and myself would go, and I don't know if there will ever be anyone to go there with me again. Kate journeys rather deeply into that land with me from time to time, but Susan was the best person for those wonderfully loony voyages. She is greatly missed and cannot be replaced.

Becky Pinto

When I was four, I dreamed that my birth mother was queen of an enormous kingdom, with orange trees, lemon trees, and gold-coin trees. She had long, flowing blond hair, and she was very, very pretty.

During my school years, I dreamed she was a brilliant scientist, poet, novelist. She had also produced the very best siblings, and brought along cousins who recognized me and didn’t think I was a total weenie, as most of the kids at school did.

In my teen years I didn’t care who she was, as long as she would come back and take me away to a more recognizable planet.

When I was 26, Children’s Aid and Adoption Society of New Jersey sent me a letter that described Susan as “5’8”, 122 lbs., …blue eyes, light brown hair and a fair complexion. She also wore glasses.”

The reality, as I’m beginning to understand it, is that Susan was all of this and so much more.

I knew Susan for 2 years. During that time I was with her five times:

When Susan first told me of her cancer, I had a feeling of anger (at whom?) at being gypped. I finally had the chance to meet her and was just starting, very slowly, to get to know her, thinking we had all the time in the world. Now she was telling me she was going to leave. Soon.

I was angry with her for smoking after having watched her father die of lung cancer. I came to terms with that anger after my ex wife in law compared addiction to cigarettes with my addiction to not exercising. I have been exercising regularly now for over a year. It is hard.

I also thought I should be, and possibly was, experiencing a feeling of being abandoned again. (That’s how it would play out in the Hollywood version.)

A year later, I view the whole thing a little differently. While I’m sad and maybe still a little angry (at whom?) that I didn’t have much time with Susan, I now can see the amazing luck I had in being with her for even a short time.

I am not a good enough writer to express what an honor it was to be present at her death. I felt very much included by all of you. It was at Susan’s vigil that I met The Cousins, and saw the beautiful bond of the Peppard sisters. Some moments from that week will live forever in my memory: Meeting Jane and Nan outside Susan’s room before she moved to Hospice, and feeling re-united with them. Having Sarah remark, after I poked my head out of the bathroom in the common room on the hospice floor and asked, What song should I sing while I’m brushing my teeth? that Susan would have said the same thing. Having the privilege of witnessing Jane and Nan, Kate, Trish and Kit singing songs from their lives together with Susan (Susie, Base). Holding Kate and Hal when Susan died, and really feeling that I am their sister.

I love knowing you all, and learning more about Susan from you, her friends and family. I treasured hearing about Susan’s life in Nova Scotia from Jerry and Monique Collins at Kelly and Peter’s wedding. And meeting the younger Susan in her writings—thank you Kate for yet another gift.

This week I have been brushing my teeth a lot. And wanting to brush them more. I have dreamed of Susan. She said to me, “I don’t know what to do with myself. And what are we going to do with you?” The skin on her cheek, laid against mine, was smooth, dry, warm.

It makes a lovely circle: Susan brought me into this world, and I was there when she left. But I wish I had been 70 or 80 when I said good-bye.

Sarah Carr

Sarah created a P-girls scrapbook. Click on each page to see it full-size.