Suzanne Anthony Gorey
May 23, 1948 ~ August 9, 2023
Suzanne Anthony Gorey, age 75, was released from her body on August 9, 2023. She died quietly in her home in Vienna, Virginia, surrounded by her loving family and longtime caregivers.
Suzanne leaves behind her husband, Hays, and daughter, Elisabeth. She has now been reunited with her beloved parents, 19 aunts and uncles, and pack of dogs that have already crossed the Rainbow Bridge, most recently, Mr. Peabody.
Suzanne was born to Dorsey and Susie Anthony in the small town of Tallassee, Alabama, in 1948. She stood out from her classmates at an early age. She loved to read, anything and everything. Her parents used to say that she read the encyclopedia at the dinner table as a child. Suzanne could make a friend of even the most quiet introvert. Her uncle once joked that she was so gregarious, people talked to her as a method of self defense.
Suzanne loved to sing and had a voice like a nightingale crossed with a sonic boom. Congregants of the First Baptist Church of Tallassee remember her powerful soprano ringing out from the choir even after she moved away decades ago.
As a teen in the mid-1960s, a tumultuous period in the civil rights movement around Montgomery, Suzanne helped register Black Alabamians to vote. She worked alongside prominent activists. Rosa Parks hemmed her junior prom dress, and Suzanne would frequent the sermons of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Even when a brick was thrown through a kitchen window of the Anthony family home, Suzanne was undeterred, and her parents knew better than to stand in her way.
Suzanne had big dreams. She left Tallassee High School a year early and went on to graduate from Auburn University in 1969 with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science. Awarded the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, she continued her studies, ultimately earning a Master’s degree from the University of Virginia.
While in Charlottesville, she worked for the Social Security Administration, helping people apply for disability benefits. A few days a week, she would travel parts of Appalachia, going to those too disabled to make it to an office to file their claims. Her empathy was evident in every case she worked on.
Suzanne worked as a Special Agent in the Department of Transportation (DOT) and was later transitioned to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) DOT, upon its inception in 1978. She transferred to the OIG Department of the Interior in 1985 as a senior agent. She was a superb case agent, and so moved up quickly through the ranks, ultimately becoming Director of Operations. She was indespensible in the office. The IG for Investigations would joke that he was a figurehead, and if you really needed anything to go to Suzanne.
Suzanne met Hays, an attorney at the Department of Justice, in 1982. They were assigned to the same case, and Hays was immediately startled by the gorgeous Suzanne. As they spent time together, Hays only became more attracted to Suzanne’s intelligence, gentleness, and thoughtfulness. They married in 1984, and Suzanne gave birth to Elisabeth, their pride and joy, the following year. Suzanne loved nothing more than being a mother, and she dedicated every part of herself to giving her daughter opportunities to flourish.
Suzanne knew hardship, but never let it waiver her faith in God. She was born with a defective aortic valve that limited her ability to engage in physical activities her whole life. In 2012, Suzanne suffered a severe stroke that left her paralyzed on the left side of her body, and largely bedbound, for the last decade of her life.
The stroke may have crippled her body, but, until Suzanne’s last months, it had comparatively little effect on her mind. She retained a memory better than most around her. She kept involved with current events and politics. She was an avid Pete Buttigeg fan and followed his 2020 presidential campaign closely.
Suzanne leaves behind no grandchildren, but thought of herself as Aunt Suzanne to the extended family of her longtime caregiver and friend, Zeinab Mohamud, providing money for pizza parties for the children during Eid and for their school supplies.
Suzanne said, when she was a teen, she was ready to shake off the dust of her small town, but no matter where she lived or traveled, she left her heart, always and forever, in Tallassee.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to Smile Train, No Kid Hungry, or the American Indian College Fund in Suzanne’s honor.
Service arrangements are pending. If you would like to be notified when Suzanne’s service will be on Zoom, please leave your e-mail address in the online guestbook.
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Suzanne was a special cousin, with whom I spent many hours talking about our families.
She was one of a kind and had such a loving, caring, and giving personally.
She fell in love with a little boy in Alabama and shower him with many toys and books. He referred to her as Aunt Suzanne. She did so much for so many.
I will miss our chat.
Love 💘 you Suzanne
Suzanne was a special pcousin, with whom I spent many hours talking about our families.
She was one of a kind and had such a loving, caring, and giving personally.
She fell in love with a little boy in Alabama and shower him with many toys and books. He referred to her as Aunt Suzanne. She did so much for so many.
I will miss our chat.
Love 💘 you Suzanne
Caroline
We knew Suzanne from well before she married Hays. Their daughter Elisabeth and our daughter Daniella became very close friends, and our families spent each New Year’s Eve together for many years until the girls went off to college. Suzanne had an extraordinarily giving heart: she encouraged our daughter’s photographic and artistic endeavors and followed her burgeoning career very closely. Even after her stroke Suzanne retained a razor-sharp mind and was a wonderful conversationalist on a wide variety of subjects. But mostly she was a loving daughter, wife, mother, and dear friend. She will be greatly missed by all the lives that she touched with such grace, kindness and generosity of spirit. May her memory be a blessing.
Peace and comfort to Hays and Betsy,
Bill Repsher
I met Suzanne when I attended Tallassee High School for one year, 1963-1964. My father, Dr. Erwing Wadsworth, and her Mother, Susie, had graduated in the same class at Tallassee High. My school in nearby Tuskegee, Alabama was closed that year due to integration, so I attended my father’s alma mater for that one year. I recognized Suzanne’s picture in the Washington Post after 60 years, and she was always as she appeared; beautiful, incredibly kind, generous, and very smart. Can imagine she was the ultimate public servant. My deepest condolences to her family, Hays and Elisabeth. With Deepest Sympathy; Ann Wadsworth-Reish
Suzanne and I worked together for more than a decade at the U.S. Department of the Interior. I was the Assistant Inspector General for Investigations and she was Director of Operations. She was a kind and generous person with a delightful sense of humor and an incredible capacity for hard work and uncompromising professionalism. I did, in fact, often say that I was just a figurehead; Suzanne ran the game.
Hays and Betsy: she spoke of both of you often and when she did there was loving sparkle in her eyes that could light a room.
Suzanne was an amazing woman. Hays and Betsy, our thoughts and prayers are with you.
Mike Cooper and Kathy Echave
Suzanne Gorey was an amazing person whose accomplishments, interests, kindness and energy were such that to know her was to understand you were in the presence of an original and true force of nature. She could be unintentionally intimidating because of her breadth of knowledge, phenomenal memory, fascinating conversation and wealth of experiences. She loved her family with all of her being and there was never a mother who loved their child more than she loved Elizabeth. She stood up for what she believed at every opportunity where she could make a difference or someone else’s life better. She never forgot that she could trace part of her heritage to her Native American roots but her Southern charm and hospitality was unparalleled. She believed everyone should be working to support Civil Rights and to make the world a better place at all times.
Suzanne Gorey told me that she decided she had to be my friend the day that Elizabeth came home from school one day early in the third grade school year. Elizabeth told Suzanne that one of the kids in her class had told a big whopper at the lunch table. The teacher had gathered some of her students to have lunch with her so that they could get to know each other. We had just moved from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Vienna a few months before. When the teacher asked my child to share something as an introduction, my child said “My parents gave me up for adoption, but changed their minds and then had to fight to get me back.” Suzanne told me that she knew right then she had to get to know me because she had to hear what happened when I found out about the lunch so she could know the rest of that story. Plus she knew I was going to need her. And I did.
She invited my child to play with Elizabeth and that started our friendship. Suzanne called me whenever she found a Beanie Baby that she knew we were looking for or when she needed to let me know what was going on at Louise Archer Elementary. We had breakfast for years at “our place” in Oakton. She mentored me through the years of raising kids, my going back to work and dealing with health and family issues. When she suffered her stroke in 2012, she was determined to get better so she could be there for Betsy and Hays. As much as she hated to leave her house on Lemontree, she said she was impressed by the beautiful home that Hays found and modified for her so that she could get back home. She fought harder to get well than anyone I’ve ever seen. She was determined to be there for Elizabeth and Hays as long as she could. Her courage in doing rehab, her relationships with her caregivers and her desire to live life as fully as possible were the most inspirational example I’ve ever seen. Suzanne never talked to me that she didn’t tell me she loved me. I am so sad that I could not live up to Suzanne’s example of friendship but I am a better person for having known her and I loved her too. Hays and Betsy, please know that Mark, Maddox, Thomas and I mourn with you and we will treasure Suzanne’s memory. Lynda Pilgrim
Suzanne was such an inspiration in my career at the Department of Interior. She often call and we would talk for hours. Rest in Heaven Suzanne.🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿