Susie Duncan Sexton grew up in a very small town: Columbia City, Indiana. After graduating twelfth in her class at Ball State University (winning the first ever John R. Emens award for “most outstanding senior”), she returned to her hometown where she worked as a teacher, a publicist, a museum curator, and a health lecturer.
Describing her work, Susie noted, “I willingly share nostalgic trips to the past as I have now achieved such an old age that no one remains who can question the authenticity of my memory of places, people and events that were very much never what they were cracked up to be.”
She wrote the monthly columns “Old Type Writer” for a popular local blog Talk of the Town and “Homeward Angle” for the Columbia City Post and Mail newspaper. She was a frequent contributor to the literary journal “Moronic Ox,” and her poetry was selected by poet Charles Michael Madigan and by Wayne State professor M.L. Liebler to be featured in “Poetic Resonance Imaging: Behind the Door.” She also was featured in Our USA, Writing Raw, Where Writers Write, and InD’tale magazines.
Her writing was featured in the Henry Ford Centennial Library “Big Read” anthology series: Call of the Wild Dearborn Animal Tales (also providing the photographic cover art), Dreaming Dreams No Mortal Ever Dared to Dream Before, What’s In A Name?, and Tree Anthology. The program has been running since 2013, and Sexton was included in each edition.
She authored two books: Secrets of an Old Typewriter and its sequel Misunderstood Gargoyles & Overrated Angels (from which this tribute blog draws its name).
Always an observer of events and human traits, Susie Duncan Sexton offered without apology her thoughts and observations, and fitting her persona into pigeonholes was thrillingly impossible. “I have searched for the ‘We of Me’ since toddler days and have always come up wanting,” she wrote, “though I trust that in my next life I shall finally have figured out how to make this world a better place full of tolerance and inclusiveness and understanding for all forms of life.”
Susie passed away in August of 2021, but her brilliant legacy of sociopolitical critique and loving reminiscence lives on through her written work. This blog will revisit her prolific catalogue – columns, editorials, reviews, and other insights – as a way of honoring her memory and helping new readers discover her unique and compelling voice.
In her own words Susie stated: “Fortunately or unfortunately, I seem to have been, always and in all ways, inhabiting the observation position rather than leading the way, so I am making up for lost time by recording my thoughts such as they are and once were.”
Misunderstood Gargoyles and Overrated Angels 