See full obituary on InDepthNH.org
Susan Levin Wessels, age 79, passed away on October 14th at the Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, NH. Susan was born in Syracuse, NY, on February 6, 1944, the daughter of Clarence and Rita Levin.
Susan was passionate about politics, nature, beauty, ideas, food, and her friends and family, which included many cats. She grew up in Pennsylvania coal country and began a lifetime of intellectual adventure, majoring in psychology at Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Melon University. She was immediately drawn to the field of artificial intelligence, which was then pioneered at Carnegie Tech. She spent her time there and later at Bolt Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, MA, and the University of Amsterdam in Holland, building human memory and language processing systems models. She later studied at the Boston Family Institute, which applied systems theory to treating families seeking counseling.
She took a position in Marketing Communications at AVCO Systems Division during a period of diversification within the aerospace industry. After four years at AVCO, she went to graduate school where she received her Master’s Degree in Organization and Management at Antioch Graduate School in Keene, NH, where she also taught Systems Theory and Family Dynamics to Master’s Degree students. Susan went on to work with many public and private sector organizations doing team building, quality circles, and other management and supervisory training forms.
Susan saw the burgeoning of the Personal Computer (PC) revolution and wanted to reconnect with her computing roots. She took a job selling PCs at a local retailer. She loved consultative sales and was trained as a salesperson by IBM. Susan then “completed the circle,” consulting with companies implementing Lotus Notes as a management tool, thus combining her background in desktop computing and organizational development. Her last corporate position was with a small consulting firm in Boston that worked with companies incorporating Lotus Notes into their workplaces, which took her to Sweden and Switzerland.
In 1989, Susan married Tim Wessels, and they built a home together in Rindge. She gave up her consulting work and started a new career better suited to a more rural lifestyle. Susan opened “The Mighty Pen,” which offered print marketing services. She later added website design. As Susan moved toward retirement, her passion for gardening and photography strengthened. Her photographs were primarily of flowers from her own and nearby gardens, and she sold and exhibited her work at various venues.
Susan was a lifelong Democrat serving as the Chair of the Rindge Democratic Town Committee. She served as a Library Trustee of the Ingalls Memorial Library in Rindge. She created a non-partisan civil society group in Rindge in 2017 to improve the responsiveness of elected town government officials to the needs of all residents. Susan was a good friend and listener and loved entertaining small groups of her friends. She was also a dedicated swimmer who swam every day she could throughout the summer in Damon Upper Reservoir, close to her home.
Susan is survived by her beloved husband of 34 years, Tim Wessels, her brother David Levin of Knoxville, TN, and her nephew Paul Levin of Nottingham, NH, and her two cats, Chessie and Snoop.
Susan will be cremated as per her wishes by the New Hampshire Cremation Society. A remembrance for her is being planned for springtime next year. Anyone who wishes to honor Susan’s life may do so with a donation in her name to a local humane society or local food pantry to help animals and people in need. The Cremation Society of New Hampshire has been entrusted with arrangements. To view an online tribute, leave a message of condolence or for more information please visit www.csnh.com.
Susan L Wessels
Published by InDepthNH.org from Oct. 27 to Oct. 28, 2023.
