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Susan Shaffer 1966
 
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About Sue: After graduation from LHSW, Sue decided she wasn't quite ready to pursue her college education, so she went to work as a customer service rep at the old Sears, Roebuck on Oakman and Grand River in Detroit. In the winter of 1968, it was clear it was time to get on with her life, so she enrolled at Eastern Michigan University to pursue a teaching degree in high school level English Grammar. After 3 years of schooling, Sue became disenchanted with a future as an English teacher and left EMU. She then became employed at Xerox University Microfilms in Ann Arbor. She worked at this organization for about a year when she met and married her husband, Jeff Wiltse. They lived in Whitmore Lake and Dexter, MI and after nine years of marriage, left Michigan looking for new opportunities for employment in Seattle, WA. Four years later, they were divorced, and Sue began life as a single woman, beginning as an office manager at King County Rape Relief near Seattle, in 1985. While employed in this clerical position, Sue became interested in the victim services area of the agency and to further this career ambition, while still working full-time at KCRR, now renamed King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, entered Antioch University in Seattle where she completed her bachelor's degree in Counseling Psychology in 1994. This educational move as well as her 5 years experience working on the agency's 24-hour crisis line as a hotline counselor, led her to the position of managing this hotline full-time. During this time, Sue also co-facilitated therapy groups for adult women survivors of childhood sexual assault, a fulfilling and challenging experience that continued for 20 years.

In 2008, Sue decided to leave the crisis line managerial position she had held and cut back her position to working 30 hours per week as a crisis counselor on this same hotline she had managed. Sue continues to work on this line from her home, a benefit she appreciates and loves, since her agency's office is located at a 3-hour, one-way commute from where she lives in Kingston, WA; this also requires a 35 minute round-trip ferry ride across Puget Sound. She remains happily unmarried, and lives on the rugged Kitsap Peninsula but most of her phone counseling work involves responding to the folks in King County, across the Sound in the Seattle area. She lives right on Puget Sound in a home her parents owned until their passing in 2004 and 2005. She has three cats and two dogs, loves studying her Bible, fishing and watching the container ships, cruise ships, tugboats, etc. cruising by, imagining their destinations. She really misses the warm water fishing "back home" in Michigan as well as the gorgeous scarlets and coppers of the trees when they turn in the fall. She's experienced three earthquakes so far, but is relieved to not have to worry about tornadoes, mosquitoes or summertime heat and humidity. She watches any TV show that showcases the Detroit area with fascination at the changes but says she will always call Michigan her first love and real home.

Message to Classmates: I look forward to attending this awesome 50-year class reunion with anticipation and hopefulness. Everybody stay well and God willing, we'll all see each other real soon.

 
  This page was last updated on October 31, 2015.