Susan Hund-Milne

is honored with a Brick from is honored with a Brick from Jesse Milne

Susan was born to Gene and Mercedes Hund in 1946 in Wichita, the middle of three children. After moving to Phoenix for three years they returned to Wichita where she attended Catholic school and lived with her family on her great grandfather’s homestead, which is now part of Sedgwick County Park. There, the family owned and operated “Laguna Beach,” a swimming lake which is also now part of the park. The seeds of her life-long spirit of dissidence were planted in her Catholic education, which she often spoke of raising many more questions than answers. Susan’s parents decided that bootlegging and owning nightclubs was not the best environment to raise children in so they moved the family to Garden City where her father became a prominent rancher. Upon her death, a high school friend, E. Garcia, wrote a message on her Facebook page that really summed up her lifelong dissatisfaction with the status quo: “Susan was a pioneer in so many ways. In my sophomore year at GCHS, Susan utilized an American tradition called Sadie Hawkins day to ask me out for a date... Susan made me feel special and equal at a time when interracial dating was frowned upon in Garden City. We had a great time, of all places, at the GC country club. I am proud to have claimed Susan as a friend, but more importantly, that she claimed me as a friend.” While attending WSU, Susan was always front and center in campus demonstrations and anti-war protests. She helped establish and wrote for the “Free Press,” which was Wichita’s counter culture, underground newspaper. In 1968 she and some classmates traveled to Chicago to protest the Vietnam war at the Democratic National Convention. Though she wasn’t necessarily marching side by side with Abbie Hoffman, she was in the mix when the Chicago PD attempted to disperse the crowd with tear gas, which she said that she would never forget the smell of. After graduating from WSU with a degree in journalism, Susan and a couple of friends moved out to San Francisco to be in the epicenter of the counterculture movement. She found a job working as a secretary somewhere in Berkley, only after assuring her reluctant employer that she was not just another “hippie type” that would quit in the near future. A short time later, her boyfriend at the time decided that things were too expensive in California so they moved back to Wichita, justifying her employer’s initial concerns. After Susan passed away, a friend wrote on her timeline: “I met (Susan) during the McGovern campaign when she was living in a communal house. We formed a women’s consciousness-raising group. I remember when she met your father. She said, ‘there’s like a glow around him.’” Which brings us to when she met Rod. They were both doing their laundry at Collegetown Laundromat on 17th and Hillside. Though Susan didn’t know him, he’s said before that he definitely recognized her as the pretty girl on stage during all the campus anti-war demonstrations. Rod asked her if she wanted to get a beer and they went next door to Kirby’s for a drink. They enjoyed their time together so much that day that they decided to go ahead and do it for another 50 years. Susan and Rod enjoyed their stint as a childless couple. Rod was the consummate outdoorsman and took her on as many adventures as she would allow. One of my favorite stories is when they went camping on the Arkansas River, dropped some acid, and eventually had to come back home because Susan was inconsolable, weeping on the banks of the river because she had it in her head that she was a Native American woman whose village had just been massacred. Rod told me that at that point, she really wasn’t much help in breaking camp down and hauling everything back to the car. Despite this incident, Susan was never much for drugs or alcohol. Though, one time when her son was in high school, she sat him down and stressed that if he was ever at a party and felt the need to imbibe, smoking weed would be a much safer alternative to alcohol. Though she probably wasn’t wrong, it’s another example of her bucking the “Just Say No” zeitgeist of the time and helping her son to logically prepare for a potential situation. In 1977, Susan’s mother helped to deliver her son, Jesse, in her home on north Shelton Street here in Wichita. She wanted to avoid the institutional, impersonal environment of a hospital, as well as avoid drugs and other tools that were commonly used at the time. In 1979, Susan, Rod, and Jesse moved to Garden City to be closer to her parents. Throughout Susan’s entire life to this point, she had been inhibited from employment and a meaningful social life by debilitating migraine headaches. But after moving back to Wichita in 1985, she was able to finally find some effective treatments that would keep her headaches under control, finally allowing her to see the sun shine on the next chapter of her life. With constant pain less of a hindrance, she started going to Church, forging countless friendships, and found a job writing for the Westside Story newspaper. Among the myriad of articles she wrote, many dealt with the history of the city and ultimately culminated in a book about the History of Wichita. In addition to the paper, she also wrote the popular “Spotlight on Wichita” book which highlighted all the services and restaurants that could be found around town. Though it waned in popularity with the rise of the internet, there was a time in the 90’s when it could be found in every hotel room in Wichita. Susan went on to buy the newspaper and the book and spent her final years before retirement as the owner of Advanced Publishing and won a litany of awards from various press organizations throughout her career for all of her writing. In 2005, Susan became a grandmother when her granddaughter Regan was born, with her second grandchild, Layne, coming three years later. Initially, she didn’t expect to be the kind of grandma she was. Susan had made passing comments in the past about wanting grandkids, but often insinuated that she would not want to be burdened or heavily involved with taking care of them. She could not have been more wrong. Rod and Jesse have often spoken of the change that the grandchildren brought to Susan. The busy woman that always had something on her calendar was all of a sudden hyper-focused on being the best grandmother she could be. They would dress up together, have tea parties, tell stories, do countless art projects, and have all kinds of other imaginative adventures. Susan Hund-Milne was a powerhouse of a woman who spent her life channeling the lion’s-share of her focus on social equality and her grandchildren. The world is a better place because of her.