Individual Details
Susan Marie Briles
(26 Dec 1943 - )
The following information on Susan Briles Kniebes is based on her résumé as of April 28, 2003, Susan's personal reminiscences and knowledge, information that Susan's mother wrote in Susan's "baby book," and, as noted below, information provided by Susan's parents.
Susan was born in the Cooley Dickenson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts, at 6:36 p.m. on December 26, 1943, while her father, Worthie Elwood Briles, was attending Army Air Forces' Pre-Meteorology Training Course at Amherst College during World War II. At that time, her mother, Clara Ruth Wilson Briles, and Susan had to live separately from Elwood because he was required to live on the Post with his unit: the 65th AAFTTC (Army Air Forces' Technical Training Command). Ruth recalls Robert Frost, who evidently was the resident poet at Amherst College at the time, walking his dog while she was taking Susan out in her buggy.
Susan recalls that, when she and her brother David were children, her father would sing them the following song, which was a marching song that he learned while he was attending the Pre-Meteorology Training Course at Amherst:
"We are the men, the weather men.
We may be wrong oh now and then.
But when you hear those planes on high,
Remember that we're the men who let the generals fly!"
During a phone conversation with Susan on April 27, 2003, Elwood recalled that, by the time he finished the Pre-Meteorology Training Course, the Army Air Forces had decided that they were training more meteorologists than they were going to need. Consequently, the graduating students were given the choice of Pilot Training, Communications Specialist Training, or continuing on with meteorology as an enlisted weather observer.
Because Elwood chose Weather School, he was sent to Mitchell Field, Hempstead, Long Island, New York, in March 1944. Before Susan and her parents proceeded to Mitchell Field, they went to Fort Worth, Texas, to visit Elwood's and Ruth's parents. Susan's baby book contains one five-generation photo of Susan, her father Worthie Elwood Briles, her grandfather Worthie Harwood Briles, her great grandmother Maggie Porterfield Briles Graves, and her great great grandmother Frances Judia Porterfield; one four-generation photo of Susan, her father, and her grandmother Leona Connally Briles, and her great grandparents Luke Connally and Susan Nesmith Connally; and a photo of Susan and Van Briles, one of her father's brothers. (Van served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. For more information on Van's military service, see the Note for Van Gordon Briles elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files.)
Because Elwood was on the thin side (as he has been all of his life), when he arrived at Mitchell Field, he was sent to the base hospital for yet another chest X-Ray. While at the hospital, Elwood realized that a lot of the activities going on there, especially in the medical laboratories, would make better use of his university training as an immunologist than Meteorology School would. Consequently, he "marched himself over to Personnel" to find out if they might be able to use his training in the hospital. Indeed they could! He ended up working in the serology lab, where he worked until the end of the War.
When they first arrived in Hempstead, Susan and her parents lived in an apartment in the home of Al and Elsie Palmer at 22 Haman. Al was a postman with a "mounted route." Since he and Elsie never had any children, they took a special interest in Susan and, once he arrived, her brother David. Once David was on the way and the family knew it would need more space than the Palmers' apartment provided, Stanley Allen, a retired Navy man who was a neighbor of the Palmers, let Susan's parents rent a house he owned "in the country" on Elmore Avenue in East Meadow in Hempstead. So that Elwood could get back and forth from the house on Elmore Avenue to Mitchell Field, the family purchased a 1929 Buick, which figures prominently in Susan's baby book and in her early memories.
After David arrived on May 26, 1945, Al Palmer would frequently take Susan along with him as he delivered mail. Susan's absence gave Ruth time to bathe and otherwise care for David and the house. The Palmers continued to send presents to Susan and David even after the family moved away, coming to visit them at Badger Village in Wisconsin during the summer of 1946. Susan remembers a big package from the Palmers arriving even after the family moved to Texas in 1948.
Ruth's sister Betty Wilson Cannon was a frequent visitor while the family was in Hempstead. At the time, Betty was working as a dietician for Continental Baking Company in New York City. (For more information on Betty, see the Note for Sarah Elizabeth Wilson elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files.)
Following the War, Elwood and Ruth returned to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where Elwood got his Ph.D. and Ruth got her M.S., both in immunogenetics. The trip from New York to Wisconsin, which began on November 17, 1945, was made in the 1929 Buick. On the way, the family stopped to visit Elwood's brother Connally Briles, an Army Air Corps pilot, who was stationed at Chanute Field in Illinois, and his wife Jewell Boyd Briles. (During World War II, Con was a bomber pilot flying missions over northern Italy, southern France, and southern Austria from Corsica. For more information on Con and his military service, see the Note for Connally Oran Briles elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files.)
When the family first arrived in Madison, they lived in an upstairs apartment at 705 Milton Street. Susan remembers that there was only one space for off-street parking and recalls waiting in the window for Elwood to come home and hoping he would get the parking spot. She also remembers the wooden drain boards at the kitchen sink. Ruth thinks that this is because Susan had her hair washed at that sink and wasn't always fond of the process.
However, most of the time that Elwood and Ruth attended the University of Wisconsin, Susan, her parents, and brother David lived in Badger Village, near the town of Baraboo, north of Madison. During the War, Badger Village had provided housing for the workers at the Badger Ordinance Plant. After the War, married graduate students lived there. Their "activity fees" were used to provide nursery school through first or second grade for their children. Susan and David attended the nursery school. When they weren't in school and their parents were at the University of Wisconsin completing their Ph.D. (Elwood) and Master's Degree (Ruth), they were cared for by Mr. and Mrs. Fred Johnson, an older couple who lived next door. Mr. Johnson worked as a maintenance person at Badger Village's power plant, just as he had during World War II.
Another of Susan's early memories is of walking to school in the rain with an umbrella, of the earthworms crawling in the puddles on the sidewalk, of not being able to open the door (which had a thumb latch she could not push down), and of having to stand in the rain until an older and stronger child came along and opened the door for her.
In 1948, the family moved first to Bryan, Texas, where Elwood had found a job doing research and teaching in the Poultry Department at Texas A&M University in nearby College Station, Texas. Elwood began at A&M as an Assistant Professor. By the time the family moved to DeKalb, Illinois, in 1957 so Elwood could do immunogenetic research on chickens for the DeKalb Agricultural Association, he had become as Associate Professor at A&M.
During the fall of 1949, the family acquired a stray fox terrier, which Susan and David named "Sniffy." Sniffy was part of the family until she died on December 26, 1956, Susan's birthday. Susan loved her very much and still misses her!
The family next moved to Kyle Street in College Station to be closer to Elwood's work. Susan and David began grade school at the Consolidated School between their home and A&M.
Ruth taught Susan much of her first grade lessons at home because Susan acquired an autoimmune disease, which was probably juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. This condition softened Susan's hip bones enough that the doctors didn't even want her to use crutches, hence the home schooling. After having her tonsils removed in Corpus Christi, Texas, while staying with Ruth's brother Travis Wilson and his wife Maureen, the disease went away before Susan began second grade.
The family next moved to a house at 1213 Marsteller, in the "Woodlands" in College Station. It was while the family was there that, on March 14, 1953, Susan's sister Sara was born in a hospital in Bryan. Sara's name is spelled "Sara" rather than "Sarah" because that's the way Susan began spelling it when helping her father complete birth announcements for her baby sister.
For a time while the family was living in College Station, Elwood's brother Connally Briles and his wife Jewell lived there as well. Con was attending Texas A&M, getting a Master's Degree in immunogenetics.
During junior high in College Station, Susan and David were both in the Junior High Band. Susan played the flute, and David played the trumpet. Since the nearby High School didn't have enough band members, Susan also played in its band as well. During this period, Susan and David both also took piano lessons.
While the family was in Texas, they spent most of their Christmases and many other holidays and vacations periods at Elwood's parents' home at 3435 East Rosedale Avenue in Fort Worth. Most Easters and some Thanksgivings and other vacation periods were spent at the home of Ruth's brother Travis Wilson's home at 5641 Ocean Drive in Corpus Christi. Several summer vacations were spent on camping trips to visit Ruth's mother in Beaumont, California, and her sisters Betty Wilson Cannon and Josephine Wilson Cochran, who lived nearby. While in Texas, the family also frequently visited with Elwood's sister Bonnie and her husband James Darwin Spencer in Beaumont, Texas; with Elwood's brother Van and sister Jeanie, who lived with Elwood's parents; and with Elwood's brother Jack David and his wife Jean, who lived in Fort Worth.
When the family first moved to DeKalb, Illinois, in 1957, and while they were having a home built on Taylor Street, they first lived in an older two-story house practically in the middle of the DeKalb Agricultural Association's main office complex. While the family was living on Taylor, Susan and David attended first DeKalb Junior High School and then DeKalb Senior High School and Sara attended the relatively nearby Glidden Grade School.
The family was still living on Taylor when Susan left for college at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in the fall of 1962. On August 21, 1965, between her Junior and Senior years of college, Susan married Gilbert Louis Grom, whom she had met at a Congregational Church Youth Group meeting at the beginning of her Freshman year of high school. Gil had graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois the spring preceding their marriage. Susan spent her Senior year at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, the first year that new campus was open. Even though she was working and keeping house as well as going to school, she managed to maintain an A average during her Senior year. With one exception, Susan felt that the best teachers that she had in college were those that she had at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle.
She and Gil first lived in an apartment on the north side of Chicago on Broadway near Sheridan. After Susan had been working for several years, they moved to a larger apartment on Morse Avenue near the Chicago-Evanston border. From both locations, Susan took the "L" to school or, later, work each day, and Gil took the train to Abbott Laboratories in North Chicago near Waukegan, Illinois.
Following graduation from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in 1966 with a B.A. in English with minors in French and library science, Susan began working for the Institute of Gas Technology on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology as a Technical Editor. She worked for IGT until 1982. During the 16 years at IGT, Susan was Supervisor of Technical Editing and eventually Associate Director of Technical Communications. The most interesting part of her work at IGT involved coordinating the editing, production, and translation (from English to French) of gas technology course material that IGT developed for the Algerian Petroleum Institute and then, when the decision was made to teach the courses in English rather than French, being responsible for the staffing, start-up, and support for English-language programs at two Algerian Petroleum Institute Schools at Boumerdes (near Algiers) and Arzew (near Oran), Algeria. These latter responsibilities involved a number of trips to Algeria.
Because they were living in relatively inexpensive apartments, Susan and Gil were able to save enough money take a trip to Europe in 1968 (France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and England) and to buy a house in Lake Zurich in about 1973. In 1975 Susan and Gil divorced. On January 1, 1977, she married Duane Van Kniebes, whom she had met at IGT. For information on Duane's ancestors and descendants (kids and grandkids), see his Family Tree Maker files, which are very extensive. For more information on Duane, see the Note at his entry in these Family Tree Maker files.
Because Duane was in charge of the two schools that operated in Algeria, Duane and Susan were able to make several trips there together, trips that they combined with visits to Germany, France, Switzerland, northern Italy, and Monaco. They took Duane's daughter Carrie with them on one trip, and his son Van with them on another. (Duane's oldest daughter Linda had already made a European trip with her parents prior to 1977.)
Because a large part of Susan's work at IGT involved responsibility for IGT's word processing and phototypesetting operations, she learned a lot about office computers before the personal computer ever came into being. Because of this knowledge, between 1982 and 1985, she became the Director of Technical Services for Chapman and Cutler, a 200+ attorney law firm in Chicago's financial district. In this job, Susan directly managed the firm's word processing services, which consisted of 31 employees, and oversaw the operation of the firm's library, records center, telephone system, facsimile, telex, mail, and messenger services, which consisted of 42 employees.
In 1984, while Susan was working for Chapman and Cutler, Duane retired from IGT. Consequently, when NBI, the company that made the word processing equipment Chapman and Cutler (and IGT) were using, offered Susan a job in Boulder, Colorado, Susan and Duane jumped at the chance to relocate to Boulder in September 1985.
After briefly living in an apartment on Elder with their dog Rockie and cat Remington, Susan and Duane and their pets moved to 4612 Hampshire Street in the Heatherwood Subdivision in unincorporated Boulder County between Boulder and Niwot, where they still lived when this Note was first created in June 2003 and revised in March 2006. Rockie was brought home as a puppy by Duane's daughter Linda in the fall of 1982 while Duane, Susan, and Linda were living in Westmont, Illinois. Duane found Remington as a stray young cat in the executive parking lot at IGT in the fall of 1983. After feeding Remington in the parking lot for several weeks, Duane brought Remington home when he jumped in the car one day.
Rockie passed away in December 1993. Her ashes are buried under a headstone at the family cottage on Big Platte Lake in Honor, Michigan. Remington died in March 2001. His ashes are also buried under his own headstone at the cottage in Michigan right next to Rockie Before Remington died, two stray cats, Roxie (named for Rockie because they had similar colorings) and Yoyo (named because he came and went numerous times during the day), adopted Susan and Duane. Luckily, they had great respect for the old guy Remington or their stay would have been short. As of May 2006, they were both still living with Susan and Duane in Bolder.
Between 1985 and July1988, Susan was a Senior Support Planner for NBI. From July 1988 until NBI suffered a financial collapse (primarily because it didn't realize how important personal computers were becoming) in November 1989, Susan was the Manager of Marketing Programs for NBI's Legal Marketing Department.
From January 1990 through July 1992, Susan worked as a Senior Communications Specialist for BCT, Inc., a division of COBE Laboratories, Inc., in Lakewood, Illinois. BCT develops, manufactures, and markets computer-based medical equipment designed to separate blood into its components.
One of Susan's responsibilities as a technical writer at COBE was to arrange for and manage the translation into French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish of many of the documents that she wrote. These translations were done by Rocky Mountain Translators (RMT) in Boulder. When the management at RMT recognized Susan's ability to find errors in the translations that had been missed by RMT's staff, they hired Susan as a Project Manager in July 1992. Susan was glad to no longer have the 45 minute-1 hour commute to Lakewood each day. Following RMT's being acquired by Sykes Enterprises, Inc., in March 1994, Susan worked for Sykes as a Project Coordinator until she retired in December 1999.
In 1994, while Susan was working for Sykes, Duane's son Van, his wife Tina, and their dog Freddie moved to Colorado and stayed with Susan and Duane for several months while Van worked in Fort Collins and Tina worked in Boulder. When their home in Illinois sold, Van and Tina bought a home in Lafayette, Colorado, where they were still living in August 2004, along with their son William (Will) Van Kniebes, who arrived on February 13, 2000, and Kaitlin (Kaity) Irene Kniebes, who arrived on January 17, 2004.
While Susan was working full time, she was an active member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), holding a number of local offices in the Chicago Chapter, being elected as Secretary for the International Board and Associate Fellow, and serving as a Judge numerous times for STC's Technical Literature Competitions.
In addition to making numerous internal presentation and creating numerous internal or customer documents for her employers, Susan also published and/or presented over 20 papers or articles, four of which received Outstanding Paper or Outstanding Article awards from STC.
Susan was also an active volunteer for the Colorado Therapeutic Riding Center (CTRC) in Boulder. She began volunteering for CTRC in 1986, served as Newsletter Editor from 1990 through 1996, served on the Board from 1991 through 1996, served as Board Secretary from 1994 through 1996, and was on STC's Used Tack Sale Committee from 1994 through 2000.
Susan had been interested in horses since she was a child. Finally, in May 1993, at the age of 50, Susan purchased her first horse, a palomino gelding named Aztec Gold. The CTRC staff was familiar with Gold during his years on the hunter-jumper circuit in Chicago and wanted to acquire him as a therapeutic riding mount, but his owner couldn't afford to give him away. Thus, Susan bought Gold. He stayed at CTRC, where he was used by the Center's clients and patients, with Susan riding him on days he wasn't "working." After several years, Gold got "bored" with the repetition of his work at CTRC, and Susan moved him to La Rienda Ranch, where she rode him on nearby trails, jumped him over small jumps, and began taking dressage lessons.
Gold died in March 1996 at the age of 24. His contributions to CTRC were documented in several CTRC newsletters. After his death, an article in the Denver Post about one of his CTRC riders who became Miss Disabled Colorado mentioned the part that Gold had played in her rehabilitation. Susan had enjoyed Gold so much that, several months after his death, she bought Cinnabar, a 7-year-old liver-chestnut who was one-half Quarter Horse, one-fourth Arabian, and one-fourth Morgan. Susan took Cinnabar on trail rides and took dressage lessons and a few jumping lessons on her.
In May 1998, Susan and five of her friends went to southeastern Ireland for a horseback riding trek from Millstreet over Claragh Mountain and through the Derrynaggant Mountains to Kenmare, Ireland. The riding portion of the trip was followed by several days of hiking in Killarney National Park, on the Dingle Peninsula, and at the Cliffs of Moher and a visit to the Irish National Stud at Tully and part of the Punchestown Three-Star International Three-Day Event nearby. (For details of this trip, see Susan's well-captioned photo album and her handwritten diary of the trip.)
In the spring of 1999, Susan moved Cinnabar from La Rienda Ranch to Foothills Equestrian Center nearby and began taking more serious dressage lessons. In October 1999, when Cinnabar proved to be more suitable for jumping than dressage, Susan traded her for a Thoroughbred gelding who liked doing dressage but hated jumping. (He belonged to a hunter-jumper instructor, who needed a horse who liked to jump.) His registered name was "Stage Salute," but Susan gave him the "barn name" of Adagio. Unfortunately, Adagio did not live up to his name and probably would have been more appropriately named "Vivace," for he proved to be too nervous and energetic for Susan.
Susan thus found a new home for Adagio and began a long search (with the help of her dressage instructor, Jennifer Oldham) for the right horse, who turned out to be a then 4-year-old, rosy gray Oldenburg (a type of German warmblood) mare from Rainbow Farm in Montrose, Colorado. Margo arrived at Foothills Equestrian Center in February 2001. Jennifer helped Susan advance Margo's and her own training. To date (October 2005), Margo and Susan have learned a lot together, winning a number of ribbons at dressage and breed shows. Jennifer moved back to England, and Susan and Margo started taking from a German-born dressage instructor, Petra Warlimont.
In the fall of 1999, shortly before Susan retired from Sykes Enterprises, Duane and Susan became the Larimer County volunteers for a joint effort of the Colorado Council of Genealogical Societies and the U.S. Geologic Survey to locate all of the graves and cemeteries in Colorado. This project involves finding the graves/cemeteries, GPS-pinpointing them, and photographing them. Duane and Susan became so interested in the history of the individuals buried in remote graves and cemeteries that their work for Larimer County includes researching and writing their history and that of their descendants and will result in the publication of one or more books.
After Susan retired, she also became interested in documenting the genealogy of the various branches of her family. Susan began with information collected by her father Worthie Elwood Briles and her sister Sara Jean Briles Moriarty. (Sara had fortunately collected as letters and handwritten or typewritten genealogical information and family stories from a number of older relatives before they passed away.) Susan began by entering the information that Elwood and Sara had collected into Family Tree Maker and then did research of her own and with her first-cousin-once-removed Caron Withers and Texas friend Otillie Milliken to add information not previously collected.
See Notes for ESTHER HAYNES PARKER for information about a mini-Connally reunion attended by SUSAN MARIE BRILES on October 25, 2006
Susan was born in the Cooley Dickenson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts, at 6:36 p.m. on December 26, 1943, while her father, Worthie Elwood Briles, was attending Army Air Forces' Pre-Meteorology Training Course at Amherst College during World War II. At that time, her mother, Clara Ruth Wilson Briles, and Susan had to live separately from Elwood because he was required to live on the Post with his unit: the 65th AAFTTC (Army Air Forces' Technical Training Command). Ruth recalls Robert Frost, who evidently was the resident poet at Amherst College at the time, walking his dog while she was taking Susan out in her buggy.
Susan recalls that, when she and her brother David were children, her father would sing them the following song, which was a marching song that he learned while he was attending the Pre-Meteorology Training Course at Amherst:
"We are the men, the weather men.
We may be wrong oh now and then.
But when you hear those planes on high,
Remember that we're the men who let the generals fly!"
During a phone conversation with Susan on April 27, 2003, Elwood recalled that, by the time he finished the Pre-Meteorology Training Course, the Army Air Forces had decided that they were training more meteorologists than they were going to need. Consequently, the graduating students were given the choice of Pilot Training, Communications Specialist Training, or continuing on with meteorology as an enlisted weather observer.
Because Elwood chose Weather School, he was sent to Mitchell Field, Hempstead, Long Island, New York, in March 1944. Before Susan and her parents proceeded to Mitchell Field, they went to Fort Worth, Texas, to visit Elwood's and Ruth's parents. Susan's baby book contains one five-generation photo of Susan, her father Worthie Elwood Briles, her grandfather Worthie Harwood Briles, her great grandmother Maggie Porterfield Briles Graves, and her great great grandmother Frances Judia Porterfield; one four-generation photo of Susan, her father, and her grandmother Leona Connally Briles, and her great grandparents Luke Connally and Susan Nesmith Connally; and a photo of Susan and Van Briles, one of her father's brothers. (Van served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. For more information on Van's military service, see the Note for Van Gordon Briles elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files.)
Because Elwood was on the thin side (as he has been all of his life), when he arrived at Mitchell Field, he was sent to the base hospital for yet another chest X-Ray. While at the hospital, Elwood realized that a lot of the activities going on there, especially in the medical laboratories, would make better use of his university training as an immunologist than Meteorology School would. Consequently, he "marched himself over to Personnel" to find out if they might be able to use his training in the hospital. Indeed they could! He ended up working in the serology lab, where he worked until the end of the War.
When they first arrived in Hempstead, Susan and her parents lived in an apartment in the home of Al and Elsie Palmer at 22 Haman. Al was a postman with a "mounted route." Since he and Elsie never had any children, they took a special interest in Susan and, once he arrived, her brother David. Once David was on the way and the family knew it would need more space than the Palmers' apartment provided, Stanley Allen, a retired Navy man who was a neighbor of the Palmers, let Susan's parents rent a house he owned "in the country" on Elmore Avenue in East Meadow in Hempstead. So that Elwood could get back and forth from the house on Elmore Avenue to Mitchell Field, the family purchased a 1929 Buick, which figures prominently in Susan's baby book and in her early memories.
After David arrived on May 26, 1945, Al Palmer would frequently take Susan along with him as he delivered mail. Susan's absence gave Ruth time to bathe and otherwise care for David and the house. The Palmers continued to send presents to Susan and David even after the family moved away, coming to visit them at Badger Village in Wisconsin during the summer of 1946. Susan remembers a big package from the Palmers arriving even after the family moved to Texas in 1948.
Ruth's sister Betty Wilson Cannon was a frequent visitor while the family was in Hempstead. At the time, Betty was working as a dietician for Continental Baking Company in New York City. (For more information on Betty, see the Note for Sarah Elizabeth Wilson elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files.)
Following the War, Elwood and Ruth returned to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where Elwood got his Ph.D. and Ruth got her M.S., both in immunogenetics. The trip from New York to Wisconsin, which began on November 17, 1945, was made in the 1929 Buick. On the way, the family stopped to visit Elwood's brother Connally Briles, an Army Air Corps pilot, who was stationed at Chanute Field in Illinois, and his wife Jewell Boyd Briles. (During World War II, Con was a bomber pilot flying missions over northern Italy, southern France, and southern Austria from Corsica. For more information on Con and his military service, see the Note for Connally Oran Briles elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files.)
When the family first arrived in Madison, they lived in an upstairs apartment at 705 Milton Street. Susan remembers that there was only one space for off-street parking and recalls waiting in the window for Elwood to come home and hoping he would get the parking spot. She also remembers the wooden drain boards at the kitchen sink. Ruth thinks that this is because Susan had her hair washed at that sink and wasn't always fond of the process.
However, most of the time that Elwood and Ruth attended the University of Wisconsin, Susan, her parents, and brother David lived in Badger Village, near the town of Baraboo, north of Madison. During the War, Badger Village had provided housing for the workers at the Badger Ordinance Plant. After the War, married graduate students lived there. Their "activity fees" were used to provide nursery school through first or second grade for their children. Susan and David attended the nursery school. When they weren't in school and their parents were at the University of Wisconsin completing their Ph.D. (Elwood) and Master's Degree (Ruth), they were cared for by Mr. and Mrs. Fred Johnson, an older couple who lived next door. Mr. Johnson worked as a maintenance person at Badger Village's power plant, just as he had during World War II.
Another of Susan's early memories is of walking to school in the rain with an umbrella, of the earthworms crawling in the puddles on the sidewalk, of not being able to open the door (which had a thumb latch she could not push down), and of having to stand in the rain until an older and stronger child came along and opened the door for her.
In 1948, the family moved first to Bryan, Texas, where Elwood had found a job doing research and teaching in the Poultry Department at Texas A&M University in nearby College Station, Texas. Elwood began at A&M as an Assistant Professor. By the time the family moved to DeKalb, Illinois, in 1957 so Elwood could do immunogenetic research on chickens for the DeKalb Agricultural Association, he had become as Associate Professor at A&M.
During the fall of 1949, the family acquired a stray fox terrier, which Susan and David named "Sniffy." Sniffy was part of the family until she died on December 26, 1956, Susan's birthday. Susan loved her very much and still misses her!
The family next moved to Kyle Street in College Station to be closer to Elwood's work. Susan and David began grade school at the Consolidated School between their home and A&M.
Ruth taught Susan much of her first grade lessons at home because Susan acquired an autoimmune disease, which was probably juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. This condition softened Susan's hip bones enough that the doctors didn't even want her to use crutches, hence the home schooling. After having her tonsils removed in Corpus Christi, Texas, while staying with Ruth's brother Travis Wilson and his wife Maureen, the disease went away before Susan began second grade.
The family next moved to a house at 1213 Marsteller, in the "Woodlands" in College Station. It was while the family was there that, on March 14, 1953, Susan's sister Sara was born in a hospital in Bryan. Sara's name is spelled "Sara" rather than "Sarah" because that's the way Susan began spelling it when helping her father complete birth announcements for her baby sister.
For a time while the family was living in College Station, Elwood's brother Connally Briles and his wife Jewell lived there as well. Con was attending Texas A&M, getting a Master's Degree in immunogenetics.
During junior high in College Station, Susan and David were both in the Junior High Band. Susan played the flute, and David played the trumpet. Since the nearby High School didn't have enough band members, Susan also played in its band as well. During this period, Susan and David both also took piano lessons.
While the family was in Texas, they spent most of their Christmases and many other holidays and vacations periods at Elwood's parents' home at 3435 East Rosedale Avenue in Fort Worth. Most Easters and some Thanksgivings and other vacation periods were spent at the home of Ruth's brother Travis Wilson's home at 5641 Ocean Drive in Corpus Christi. Several summer vacations were spent on camping trips to visit Ruth's mother in Beaumont, California, and her sisters Betty Wilson Cannon and Josephine Wilson Cochran, who lived nearby. While in Texas, the family also frequently visited with Elwood's sister Bonnie and her husband James Darwin Spencer in Beaumont, Texas; with Elwood's brother Van and sister Jeanie, who lived with Elwood's parents; and with Elwood's brother Jack David and his wife Jean, who lived in Fort Worth.
When the family first moved to DeKalb, Illinois, in 1957, and while they were having a home built on Taylor Street, they first lived in an older two-story house practically in the middle of the DeKalb Agricultural Association's main office complex. While the family was living on Taylor, Susan and David attended first DeKalb Junior High School and then DeKalb Senior High School and Sara attended the relatively nearby Glidden Grade School.
The family was still living on Taylor when Susan left for college at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in the fall of 1962. On August 21, 1965, between her Junior and Senior years of college, Susan married Gilbert Louis Grom, whom she had met at a Congregational Church Youth Group meeting at the beginning of her Freshman year of high school. Gil had graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois the spring preceding their marriage. Susan spent her Senior year at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, the first year that new campus was open. Even though she was working and keeping house as well as going to school, she managed to maintain an A average during her Senior year. With one exception, Susan felt that the best teachers that she had in college were those that she had at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle.
She and Gil first lived in an apartment on the north side of Chicago on Broadway near Sheridan. After Susan had been working for several years, they moved to a larger apartment on Morse Avenue near the Chicago-Evanston border. From both locations, Susan took the "L" to school or, later, work each day, and Gil took the train to Abbott Laboratories in North Chicago near Waukegan, Illinois.
Following graduation from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in 1966 with a B.A. in English with minors in French and library science, Susan began working for the Institute of Gas Technology on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology as a Technical Editor. She worked for IGT until 1982. During the 16 years at IGT, Susan was Supervisor of Technical Editing and eventually Associate Director of Technical Communications. The most interesting part of her work at IGT involved coordinating the editing, production, and translation (from English to French) of gas technology course material that IGT developed for the Algerian Petroleum Institute and then, when the decision was made to teach the courses in English rather than French, being responsible for the staffing, start-up, and support for English-language programs at two Algerian Petroleum Institute Schools at Boumerdes (near Algiers) and Arzew (near Oran), Algeria. These latter responsibilities involved a number of trips to Algeria.
Because they were living in relatively inexpensive apartments, Susan and Gil were able to save enough money take a trip to Europe in 1968 (France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and England) and to buy a house in Lake Zurich in about 1973. In 1975 Susan and Gil divorced. On January 1, 1977, she married Duane Van Kniebes, whom she had met at IGT. For information on Duane's ancestors and descendants (kids and grandkids), see his Family Tree Maker files, which are very extensive. For more information on Duane, see the Note at his entry in these Family Tree Maker files.
Because Duane was in charge of the two schools that operated in Algeria, Duane and Susan were able to make several trips there together, trips that they combined with visits to Germany, France, Switzerland, northern Italy, and Monaco. They took Duane's daughter Carrie with them on one trip, and his son Van with them on another. (Duane's oldest daughter Linda had already made a European trip with her parents prior to 1977.)
Because a large part of Susan's work at IGT involved responsibility for IGT's word processing and phototypesetting operations, she learned a lot about office computers before the personal computer ever came into being. Because of this knowledge, between 1982 and 1985, she became the Director of Technical Services for Chapman and Cutler, a 200+ attorney law firm in Chicago's financial district. In this job, Susan directly managed the firm's word processing services, which consisted of 31 employees, and oversaw the operation of the firm's library, records center, telephone system, facsimile, telex, mail, and messenger services, which consisted of 42 employees.
In 1984, while Susan was working for Chapman and Cutler, Duane retired from IGT. Consequently, when NBI, the company that made the word processing equipment Chapman and Cutler (and IGT) were using, offered Susan a job in Boulder, Colorado, Susan and Duane jumped at the chance to relocate to Boulder in September 1985.
After briefly living in an apartment on Elder with their dog Rockie and cat Remington, Susan and Duane and their pets moved to 4612 Hampshire Street in the Heatherwood Subdivision in unincorporated Boulder County between Boulder and Niwot, where they still lived when this Note was first created in June 2003 and revised in March 2006. Rockie was brought home as a puppy by Duane's daughter Linda in the fall of 1982 while Duane, Susan, and Linda were living in Westmont, Illinois. Duane found Remington as a stray young cat in the executive parking lot at IGT in the fall of 1983. After feeding Remington in the parking lot for several weeks, Duane brought Remington home when he jumped in the car one day.
Rockie passed away in December 1993. Her ashes are buried under a headstone at the family cottage on Big Platte Lake in Honor, Michigan. Remington died in March 2001. His ashes are also buried under his own headstone at the cottage in Michigan right next to Rockie Before Remington died, two stray cats, Roxie (named for Rockie because they had similar colorings) and Yoyo (named because he came and went numerous times during the day), adopted Susan and Duane. Luckily, they had great respect for the old guy Remington or their stay would have been short. As of May 2006, they were both still living with Susan and Duane in Bolder.
Between 1985 and July1988, Susan was a Senior Support Planner for NBI. From July 1988 until NBI suffered a financial collapse (primarily because it didn't realize how important personal computers were becoming) in November 1989, Susan was the Manager of Marketing Programs for NBI's Legal Marketing Department.
From January 1990 through July 1992, Susan worked as a Senior Communications Specialist for BCT, Inc., a division of COBE Laboratories, Inc., in Lakewood, Illinois. BCT develops, manufactures, and markets computer-based medical equipment designed to separate blood into its components.
One of Susan's responsibilities as a technical writer at COBE was to arrange for and manage the translation into French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish of many of the documents that she wrote. These translations were done by Rocky Mountain Translators (RMT) in Boulder. When the management at RMT recognized Susan's ability to find errors in the translations that had been missed by RMT's staff, they hired Susan as a Project Manager in July 1992. Susan was glad to no longer have the 45 minute-1 hour commute to Lakewood each day. Following RMT's being acquired by Sykes Enterprises, Inc., in March 1994, Susan worked for Sykes as a Project Coordinator until she retired in December 1999.
In 1994, while Susan was working for Sykes, Duane's son Van, his wife Tina, and their dog Freddie moved to Colorado and stayed with Susan and Duane for several months while Van worked in Fort Collins and Tina worked in Boulder. When their home in Illinois sold, Van and Tina bought a home in Lafayette, Colorado, where they were still living in August 2004, along with their son William (Will) Van Kniebes, who arrived on February 13, 2000, and Kaitlin (Kaity) Irene Kniebes, who arrived on January 17, 2004.
While Susan was working full time, she was an active member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), holding a number of local offices in the Chicago Chapter, being elected as Secretary for the International Board and Associate Fellow, and serving as a Judge numerous times for STC's Technical Literature Competitions.
In addition to making numerous internal presentation and creating numerous internal or customer documents for her employers, Susan also published and/or presented over 20 papers or articles, four of which received Outstanding Paper or Outstanding Article awards from STC.
Susan was also an active volunteer for the Colorado Therapeutic Riding Center (CTRC) in Boulder. She began volunteering for CTRC in 1986, served as Newsletter Editor from 1990 through 1996, served on the Board from 1991 through 1996, served as Board Secretary from 1994 through 1996, and was on STC's Used Tack Sale Committee from 1994 through 2000.
Susan had been interested in horses since she was a child. Finally, in May 1993, at the age of 50, Susan purchased her first horse, a palomino gelding named Aztec Gold. The CTRC staff was familiar with Gold during his years on the hunter-jumper circuit in Chicago and wanted to acquire him as a therapeutic riding mount, but his owner couldn't afford to give him away. Thus, Susan bought Gold. He stayed at CTRC, where he was used by the Center's clients and patients, with Susan riding him on days he wasn't "working." After several years, Gold got "bored" with the repetition of his work at CTRC, and Susan moved him to La Rienda Ranch, where she rode him on nearby trails, jumped him over small jumps, and began taking dressage lessons.
Gold died in March 1996 at the age of 24. His contributions to CTRC were documented in several CTRC newsletters. After his death, an article in the Denver Post about one of his CTRC riders who became Miss Disabled Colorado mentioned the part that Gold had played in her rehabilitation. Susan had enjoyed Gold so much that, several months after his death, she bought Cinnabar, a 7-year-old liver-chestnut who was one-half Quarter Horse, one-fourth Arabian, and one-fourth Morgan. Susan took Cinnabar on trail rides and took dressage lessons and a few jumping lessons on her.
In May 1998, Susan and five of her friends went to southeastern Ireland for a horseback riding trek from Millstreet over Claragh Mountain and through the Derrynaggant Mountains to Kenmare, Ireland. The riding portion of the trip was followed by several days of hiking in Killarney National Park, on the Dingle Peninsula, and at the Cliffs of Moher and a visit to the Irish National Stud at Tully and part of the Punchestown Three-Star International Three-Day Event nearby. (For details of this trip, see Susan's well-captioned photo album and her handwritten diary of the trip.)
In the spring of 1999, Susan moved Cinnabar from La Rienda Ranch to Foothills Equestrian Center nearby and began taking more serious dressage lessons. In October 1999, when Cinnabar proved to be more suitable for jumping than dressage, Susan traded her for a Thoroughbred gelding who liked doing dressage but hated jumping. (He belonged to a hunter-jumper instructor, who needed a horse who liked to jump.) His registered name was "Stage Salute," but Susan gave him the "barn name" of Adagio. Unfortunately, Adagio did not live up to his name and probably would have been more appropriately named "Vivace," for he proved to be too nervous and energetic for Susan.
Susan thus found a new home for Adagio and began a long search (with the help of her dressage instructor, Jennifer Oldham) for the right horse, who turned out to be a then 4-year-old, rosy gray Oldenburg (a type of German warmblood) mare from Rainbow Farm in Montrose, Colorado. Margo arrived at Foothills Equestrian Center in February 2001. Jennifer helped Susan advance Margo's and her own training. To date (October 2005), Margo and Susan have learned a lot together, winning a number of ribbons at dressage and breed shows. Jennifer moved back to England, and Susan and Margo started taking from a German-born dressage instructor, Petra Warlimont.
In the fall of 1999, shortly before Susan retired from Sykes Enterprises, Duane and Susan became the Larimer County volunteers for a joint effort of the Colorado Council of Genealogical Societies and the U.S. Geologic Survey to locate all of the graves and cemeteries in Colorado. This project involves finding the graves/cemeteries, GPS-pinpointing them, and photographing them. Duane and Susan became so interested in the history of the individuals buried in remote graves and cemeteries that their work for Larimer County includes researching and writing their history and that of their descendants and will result in the publication of one or more books.
After Susan retired, she also became interested in documenting the genealogy of the various branches of her family. Susan began with information collected by her father Worthie Elwood Briles and her sister Sara Jean Briles Moriarty. (Sara had fortunately collected as letters and handwritten or typewritten genealogical information and family stories from a number of older relatives before they passed away.) Susan began by entering the information that Elwood and Sara had collected into Family Tree Maker and then did research of her own and with her first-cousin-once-removed Caron Withers and Texas friend Otillie Milliken to add information not previously collected.
See Notes for ESTHER HAYNES PARKER for information about a mini-Connally reunion attended by SUSAN MARIE BRILES on October 25, 2006
Events
| Birth | 26 Dec 1943 | Northampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts |  | ||
| Marriage | 21 Aug 1965 | DeKalb, DeKalb County, Illinois - Gilbert Louis Grom | | ||
| Marriage | 1 Jan 1977 | DeKalb County, Illinois (on the farm of Susan's parents) - Duane Van Kniebes | |
Families
| Spouse | Gilbert Louis Grom (1941 - 1983) |
| Spouse | Duane Van Kniebes (1926 - 2020) |
| Father | Worthie Elwood Briles (1918 - 2016) |
| Mother | Clara Ruth Wilson (1919 - 2011) |
| Sibling | David Elwood Briles (1945 - ) |
| Sibling | Sara Jean Briles (1953 - ) |
Endnotes
1. Original Briles Family Genealogy Information Collected by Worthie Elwood Briles, Susan Marie Briles Kniebes, Sara Jean Br.
2. Divorce Decree for Gilbert L. Grom and Susan Marie Grom.
3. Original Briles Family Genealogy Information Collected by Worthie Elwood Briles, Susan Marie Briles Kniebes, Sara Jean Br.