Meet Susan Blandy

by Althea Church

Band-Aids. Lots of Band-Aids.  That is how Susan Blandy describes her childhood climbing up and falling out of trees and other outdoor adventures with her three lively sisters.  (Susan is the eldest.) A love of reading was established early when she and her mother walked down the hill with a laundrybasket to fill up at the bookmobile stop.  She liked to read the family copy of Life magazine, but had to go to the barber shop to read a copy of the Post.

The family moved from their multi-cultural neighborhood in Cleveland Heights, Ohio,eventually to Exeter, New Hampshire, where her father was a school administrator.  Susan was very fortunate to be able to attend grades 7-12 at the historic Robinson Female Seminary, an academy for girls founded in 1867 by an Exeter citizen who made his fortune from Southern cotton.

Susan was a third generation student at Oberlin College (her parents and father’s parents were graduates, and her sons were 4th generation grads). An art history degree was followed by an internship at the Worcester (Mass.) Art Museum, where Susan decided museum curatorial work was not for her. She then attended McGill University in Montreal, earning a Master’s Degree in Library Science, with an emphasis in special libraries, such as medicine or music.

A college friend suggested to Susan that the Harvard Graduate School of Design Library would be a good place to work and also to meet men, so that is where she went and where she met her husband, Tom, an architect working on his degree.  

In the late 1960’s Susan and Tom moved to Troy, a place where they hoped to make a difference in the life of the community.  Tom designed the Hudson Valley Community College Library, and in 1970 Susan became the Librarian!  Susan remained at HVCC and became a full professor, teaching New York State History, American Architecture, and Research Methods, retiring after 40 years’ service.  While there she also led efforts to organize faculty and unclassified employees, and was involved in expansion of the college from a technical, post-WWII institution of 4,000 students to a community college of 22,000, offering 80+ degree programs when she retired in 2010.

In her spare time, Susan (and Tom as well) has been involved in many organizations in the Troy area – charitable, art, music, land and historic preservation, Hudson River conservation, and architecture tours of downtown Troy.  She has truly made a difference in her community.

Susan has a love of music and is a member of the regionally-known Battenkill Chorale and longs for a time (soon?) when the chorale will again be rehearsing and performing.  Until then, Susan will be at work in the gardens surrounding her 1835 home in Troy.  “Perennial doesn’t mean live forever, except lilacs and rhododendrons.” And this year it is time to re-landscape the large perennial garden.  While doing this the salad garden will be relocated in anticipation of a luscious summer harvest of tomatoes, cukes, carrots and radishes!

Susan has two sons: Charlie, a tenor, sidelined by Covid and attending Tufts University, and Jim, a software geek, plus 1 grandson and 3 ballet-loving granddaughters.

Susan is a two year member of the AAUW Scribblers writing group.  Please read her poem about Spring, “Notes on the Back of an Unused Concert Ticket, April 2020,” included in Scratchings 3, and shown below.

 

Notes on the Back of an Unused Concert Ticket, April 2020
by Susan Blandy

The hawks are gathering
Spiraling in threes and fours
Over the short grass meadows
For a quick hunt before heading North.

The laden clouds ease North, thick with rain
Lumpy as an old mattress cover,
Spotted and wrinkled like the
Back of Grandmother’s hand.

In December I would read the mackerel sky and foretell sleet and snow,
But April rains bring dandelions, tiny leaves and violets,
Swamp marigolds wading among the skunk cabbages,
Asparagus shoots testing the cold membrane of air,
Purple peony stems leaning stolid against the wind,
Mosquitoes hatching as frogs and toads and sun fish watch.

The reluctant bare twigged trees still etch the sky.
Slowly merging clouds process and lower.
In the fading light, the grass is impossibly green.

April is ending here.