Obituary: Susan Perry
Susan Perry, age 63, of Cherry Hill, an advocate for adoptees rights for the past 10 years, passed away Monday, April 7, after an eight-month battle against melanoma.
A blog about adoptee rights that she began three years ago at her daughter’s dining room table, www.nanadays.blogspot.com, has since had nearly 60,000 visitors, and the Adoptees Birthright Bill, which she fought for tirelessly, passed the senate and assembly in New Jersey, and is now awaiting Governor Christie’s signature. He conditionally vetoed a similar bill in 2011.
Mrs. Perry was adopted by a Haddonfield couple in 1950 when she was 3 months old, and with them and her older brother Doug, she spent summers on Long Beach Island, where she learned to water ski on the cove in Harvey Cedars.
Over the years, she taught many others to water ski in that same cove with the mantra, “Heels down, knees together, arms straight!”
Mrs. Perry also loved sailing in the bay and body surfing in the ocean. She often said that there was nothing better in life than having the whole family together on the beach, and in the ocean on a day with good waves.
Growing up in Haddonfield, she lived down the street from her future husband, Ty Perry, but often played with his younger brothers, especially Bill, who was her first best friend. Graduating from Haddonfield High School in 1968, she studied literature at Muhlenberg College, graduating Cum Laude in three years so that she could marry Ty, who she had begun dating her second year of college.
Mrs. Perry briefly taught English at Lenape High School, but transitioned when she had her first daughter, Kate, to teaching part-time at Rowan University, then Glassboro State. After both daughters had reached high school, Susan ran a marketing and writing business, ‘The Write Stuff.’
After being diagnosed with Stage II melanoma more than 16 years ago, and with the encouragement of her daughter Kate, a physician, and her own doctor, Mrs. Perry decided to search for her original mother.
She was shocked to find how the system worked to block adoptees from any information about their past, as she had always assumed that when and if she was ready to search, she would have a right to know this most basic of information. Thus, an accidental activist was born.
Mrs. Perry did eventually find her original mother on her own, and she was able to write her a letter. Her mother wrote back at the time, and indicated that she was not capable of a relationship, as she had kept this birth a secret from everyone in her life, including her daughter, but she later called and, though still incapable of a relationship, was able to say, “I’ve always loved you in my heart.”
For the past 15 years, in addition to advocating for adoptees rights, Mrs. Perry’s life had been busy with her grandchildren, 6 of them now ranging in age from 3 to 9.
This past July, she accompanied her younger daughter on a three week trip to Spain, with 30 students from Masterman High School, (where that daughter is a teacher), to help care for three of those grandchildren.
It was a week after returning from that trip, on which she had been feeling fine, that the Stage IV melanoma diagnosis was given. She considered it one of the great gifts of her life that only a few weeks after this diagnosis, she was reunited with the two sisters from whom she had been kept a secret for more than 60 years.
“I now believe in miracles,” she wrote on her blog at the time.
Those sisters, Carol Dowlen and Jo Pierson, visited often, and wrote nearly every day during the eight-month battle with melanoma that eventually took Mrs. Perry’s life.
Mrs. Perry loved life, family, and friends. Her laugh was one of a kind.
In addition to her husband of 42 years, Ty, and her recently found siblings, Carol Dowlen, Jo Pierson, and Ricardo Ries, Mrs. Perry is survived by daughters Kate (Ed) Penberthy and Jenn (Anthony) Gentlesk, grandchildren Emma, Eddie, and Ty Penberthy, and Grace, Genevieve, and Joseph Gentlesk, brother Doug Thomson, and many dear friends and family.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be sent to the Women’s Prison Ministry, First Presbyterian Church, 20 Kings Highway East, Haddonfield, NJ 08033, or to the Melanoma Research Program, Abramson Cancer Center, UPenn, 3400 Civic Center Blvd Philadelphia, PA 19104.
