Elizabeth "Susie" Carlyon

is honored with a Large Paver from Nancy C. Millett.

Elizabeth Carlyon, born in 1903 in Dunkirk, New York, was the daughter of Katherine Wirish Schultz, a gifted craftswoman and baker, and August Willhelm Schultz, a drayman renowned for his feats of strength. Using two long leather straps, one pressed across his forehead and the other over his shoulders, he alone lifted and carried up a flight of stairs the player-piano he unloaded in the front parlor. "Kitty, this is for Elizabeth. That girl has talent!"

Indeed she did. Blessed with perfect pitch and master of improvisation, Mother obeyed her German music teacher's orders to "Practice every piece 25 times!" but met the goal by varying each piece HER way. At the age of 14, she caught the ear of professional musicians while demonstrating pianos at her part-time job, and, under strict conditions imposed by her mother, became the pianist for a major dance band performing in ballrooms throughout western New York State.

Even her nickname she owed to her musical talent. Late to a rehearsal of the Capitol Theater orchestra, in which she was its only female member, she dashed down the aisle as the men were striking up a new song with which to entertain the audience before the silent film began: "If you knew Susie like I know Susie, Oh! Oh! Oh! what a girl!" Lustily, the men sang her into their midst, and the name stuck.

If music expressed Mother's soul, her love for one man, Herbert Carlyon (Herb, the plumber) to whom she was married for 67 years before her death at age 87, ruled her heart. About the roles a woman might play, Mother was never confused. "You must marry a man who will let you be a wife first, a mother second," she advised. And, although she never said so, and in fact hid much of herself under the mantle of "mother," she taught by example the need to develop and enjoy one's own talents to the fullest to improvise when things get dull. For this lesson her three children, each with talents very different from each other's, are deeply grateful.

Submitted by her daughter, Nancy Carlyon Millett

September 5, 1995