Susan
by Mike Thompson, 1/6/2026
Susan, my sister, was born in Boise Idaho on April 28, 1946. Albert "Tommy" Thompson, our dad, had just returned home from his final Army Air Corps assignment in Chicago after flying a B-25 in India during the later part of World War II. Dad's passion for flying would soon take his young family to Peru, and then to Alaska.
I wasn't born yet when Dad, Mom, older brother Bobby, and Susan went to Peru in 1947. Dad's job there with Standard Oil was to fly a Grumman Goose into the upper Amazon River, where company geologists were prospecting for oil. Mom, Bobby, and Susan lived in Lima during this period. They did find oil, but then the government of Peru nationalized the oil industry and sent Standard Oil packing.
After leaving Peru, the Thompsons returned to Yakima, where our mother, Agnes' parents and two of her sisters were living. Dad took a job as a salesman at Wikstrom Motors, the Buick dealership in town. In 1954 Mom and Dad bought a house at 1409 South 12th Avenue, on the south end of town near the airport, where they were living when I was born in September of that year.
Dad found his next flying job in Alaska, which was still known as the Alaska Territory at the time, as Alaska didn't become a state until 1959. When I was just a couple years old we moved from Yakima to Nome, where dad was based as a pilot for Wien Airlines. After a year in Nome we moved to Fairbanks, where I went to Kindergarten at Denali Elementary School.
By the early 1960s Mom had had enough of the long, dark, cold Alaska winters. She, Susan, and I moved back to Yakima, while Dad and Bobby stayed in Fairbanks. Bobby finished high school there, briefly attended the University of Alaska, and worked as a baggage handler at Wien. Mom, Susan, and I lived in the house on 12th Avenue during the school year. Susan attended Saint Paul's Cathedral School and then Saint Joseph Academy, while I attended Hoover Elementary. We would fly up to Fairbanks to spend our summer vacations with Dad and Bobby. Susan graduated from Saint Joseph Academy in 1964, the year after our dad died in a plane crash in Alaska.
Susan went to school at Yakima Valley College for two years after graduating from high school. The campus was less than a mile from our house on 12th Avenue, so she could walk to school and back. While at YVC, Susan ran for Student Body Secretary and won, which provided her with a little scholarship money. In the fall of 1966 Susan left Yakima to go to school at Oregon State University in Corvallis.
The photo below of Bobby, Susan, and I next to our car at the house on 12th Avenue is labeled "1968". It must have been taken in the early spring of that year, and it would be the last picture of the three of us together. Bobby died in a plane crash later that spring. Susan graduated from OSU in June, and soon after left for Miami, Florida, where she had taken her first post-college job with a fabric company.
At OSU, Susan met Bill Goodman of Butte, Montana. Bill was a math major and was in Navy ROTC. After graduating in 1968, Susan took a job with a fabric company in Miami, Florida, while Bill enlisted in the Navy and attended flying school at Pensacola, Florida. Susan and Bill were married in Yakima in 1969.
Bill's tour of active duty in the Navy then took them to Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, to Honolulu, Hawaii, and to Okinawa, Japan. After leaving the Navy, Bill and Susan returned to the Northwest. Bill found work based on his degree in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science from Oregon State University, and on his experience as a pilot in the Navy. He worked for a software company in Portland, as an air traffic controller in Pendleton, and then for Boeing in Seattle. Bill then took a job as a co-pilot with Pacific Southwest Airlines, which was absorbed in 1987 by US Air. Bill ended his career with Boeing 787 Engineering at the Boeing Everett plant.
The wonderful constant was that Susan was always nearby during the years that she and I were raising our young families, and we were often able to be together for holidays and special occasions. Their first child, Katie, was born in 1973, shortly after they returned to the Pacific Northwest. Their second child, Maggie was born in 1976 while they were living in West Linn, Oregon, just south of Portland. And their third child, Billy was born in 1983 while they were living in Highland Meadows, just east of Auburn, Washington. Billy arrived just two months after our first child, Erika was born. I got to be Susan's kids' Uncle Mike, while she was my childrens' Aunt Susan.
We almost always made it to Mom and Al Desserault's home in Yakima for Easter. The first photo below is of Susan and Bill's young family in 1983, taken in Mom's back yard in front of the magnolia tree that was often the backdrop for pictures of our kids at Easter. The second photo was taken in Mom's living room over a decade later. The third photo is from later still, and includes Katie's husband Damon and grandkids Ella and Sev Dreke.
Sewing was an important part of Susan's life, always a creative outlet for her. The sewing started early for Susan, as after our Dad died our Mom made our living by teaching sewing lessons in our home on 12th Avenue. Susan learned all the advanced skills including pattern alteration, and could make beautiful clothes that perfectly fit the complex form of the human body. Susan's sewing with Mom led to a Home Economics degree from Oregon State University, then to her first post-college job with a fabric company in Miami, Florida. Sewing was a skill that our step-sister Beverley mastered as well. Trips to Portland to visit Bev invariably included a tour of the local fabric stores to find material for whatever sewing projects were under way. The photo below shows Susan and Bev enjoying a laugh during one such outing.
With their kids grown, Susan and Bill had a beautiful house built on Whidbey Island where they lived during the last two decades of Susan's life. The house is just north of Fort Ebey State Park overlooking the Straight of Juan de Fuca, with the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island both visible to the west. The house was the site of many family gatherings through the years, and a wonderful haven for enjoying views of the water and quiet walks on the beach and in the park.
Susan and Bill's traveling didn't stop when Bill retired. Far from it - they made many trips together and often invited their kids, friends, and Jane and I to come along. Jane and I made a couple trips to the Palm Springs area with them during the winter, where we enjoyed their company and the warm SoCal sunshine. The pictures below are of Susan, Bill, Katie, Maggie, and Billy at Joshua Tree National Park, and of Susan at dinner with daughter Maggie.
She was a rare personality, asking little for herself but ever interested in those around her, and always lending a helping hand while offering encouragement. When you met Susan she didn't look at you, she looked into you, and she liked what she saw. It was a gift that she inherited from our mom, who's warm and powerful emotional embrace you immediately felt each time you met her. Susan was the easiest person to be around that you could imagine, and time spent with her was always a pleasure. She wanted to know what you were up to, how you were feeling, and then if there was any way she could help you. If she was at home, she would lead you into her kitchen and fix you something to eat while you shared calm conversation. One always left Susan's company feeling embraced, cherished, and renewed. Since the day I was born, Susan has been a non-stop source of love and acceptance for me.
As we grow older there are fewer and fewer people with whom we can share the memories of our youth. With Susan gone, I now feel that a door has been shut on so many of the people, places, and things from years gone by that I hold dear in my heart. Times of great joy and times of great sadness, like the tragic deaths of our dad and our brother Bobby. Little things that we've both laughed about through the years, like the annual, down-on-your-knees scrubbing of the carpets that Mom made sure we participated in at our house on 12th Avenue in Yakima.
- Pedaling our bikes to the little grocery store on Mead Avenue for a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk.
- Dad waking us up to show us a moose walking through our yard in Fairbanks.
- Trips to the Tri-Cities to visit uncles, aunts, and cousins.
- Our kind next-door neighbor, Gabe Fischer, whistling while he worked in his always-tidy yard.
- Mom leading us in the Rosary as she drove the car over Satus Pass, on our way to visit Beverley in Portland.
- Mom's wedding to Al Desserault at a little chapel in Hawaii.
- Easters spent in Yakima. Easter egg hunts, and our kids playing with Mom's old Underwood typewriter in the basement.
- Drives through the canyon along the Yakima River while on our way to visit Mom and fill her pill boxes.
The times of our lives. Who's left to remember them with?
I was very, very lucky to be able to spend so much time with Susan during the years when we were both raising our kids. We were together often at holiday celebrations, piano recitals, weddings, and the like. But we were both so busy that it was rare to have time to spend one-on-one, and looking back I really wish there could have been more of that. We did make many trips together back to Yakima during the years when our Mom's health was beginning to fail, and I remember our drives over Snoqualmie Pass, and sitting at the kitchen table together, chatting while filling pill boxes with Mom's daily meds. I also remember a trip to the Tri-Cities a few years back when Susan and I visited our surviving cousins on the McFadden side, Elizabeth and Mary McFadden and Marilyn (McFadden) Rosenberg. It was wonderful to be alone with Susan, able to speak openly about our feelings, our situations, and share our memories of times gone by.
Time flies, and then it's gone forever. Find ways to spend time with the people you'll miss the most.