Iva Suzanne (Suzi) Beall Colbert

Susan was born on February 17, 1945, to John William and Fay Coghlan Beall in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where the family lived until moving to Clinton, Mississippi, in 1957.

While a student at Clinton High School, Suzi was a teen reporter for the Clinton News, a stringer for the Jackson Daily News, and a National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist. In a nationwide contest sponsored by Seventeen Magazine, Suzi was one of two winners nationwide and was treated to a week in New York City as the guest of Seventeen Magazine. The whirlwind trip to the Big Apple ended just in time for her graduation from Clinton High as the Salutatorian of the Class of 1963.

Susan, a registered nurse since graduating from Gilfoy School of Nursing in 1966 as the Balfour Award recipient, also graduated first in her class from Mississippi College School of Nursing in 1983 and worked at every private hospital in the Jackson area, the University of Mississippi Hospital and Clinics, the State Department of Health, private medical/surgical clinics, and as a nurse consultant prior to retirement in 2008.

She learned to fly a Cessna 150, and proudly soloed in 1974. Her father was greatly relieved when Suzi's enthusiasm for flying cooled and she announced “I’m grounding myself before they have to pick me out of the top of a pine tree!" In 1979, she enrolled in a writer's workshop offered by the editor of a local magazine who hired her on the spot as the assistant editor for Jackson/Mississippi Magazine, a job she held for a year before returning to nursing.

Three years after her first marriage ended, Susan married Bill Colbert in 1977 and they established a "his, mine, and ours" blended family. Bill recalls that Susan once wrote, "Being mom to four active, mischievous, smart, hilarious, creative, and cute kids was the toughest thing I ever did…and the most fun I ever had!" 1985, while all four children were students at St. Andrew's Episcopal School, the Colberts hosted Kenji Oyama, an exchange student from Osaka, Japan. Bonds from that delightful experience continue to this day. Kenji, who dubbed Susan his American mom, visited the Colberts several times since his student days, most recently in 2019 when he brought his wife and two young adult children to meet his host family.

Preceded in death by her parents, she is survived by her husband, Bill Colbert; three sons: Christopher Odom and wife Kathleen and children Ivy and Josie, of Newtown, PA; Dr. Kyle Odom and wife Theresa and children Ethan, John Hiett, Aidan, and Coghlan, of Lawrence, Kansas; William Colbert, III, and wife Kate and children Ella Bourne and Lawson, of Madison, MS. She is also survived by her step-daughter, Courtney Colbert Simmons and children T.J. and Emily Terry, of Bentonville, AR; sister, Judi Beall, of Jackson, and brother, Dr. Jon Michael Beall and wife Pat, of Madison, MS, and two nephews.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the American Cancer Society.