Susan "Sue" Sauer

An Inveterate Traveler

Susan Sauer set goals for herself, and that applied to her wanderlust. She decided that she was going to visit 50 countries by the time she turned 50. That meant by November of this year. By her count, she had been to 48 as of last summer.

And an itinerary was in hand for a trip last fall that would have put her over the top. Her good friend, Clare Doyle, had to admit it was perhaps the wackiest itinerary she had ever heard of, but it did the job. Ms. Sauer was going to fulfill one dream by attending cooking school in Italy, a country she had already been to, then was going to stop for one day in Hungary, which would be No. 49, before winding up in Wales, No. 50.

Ms. Doyle teased her about whether Wales, being part of the United Kingdom, could rightfully count as a separate country, but she pointed out that Ms. Sauer had been to Czechoslovakia when it was one country, so maybe the math was O.K.

Ms. Sauer, a managing director at Marsh Inc., lived in Chicago and was attending a meeting at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. She had five nephews, whom she adored and treated as the perfect aunt would. A new interest was golf, which she had taken up a couple of years ago, in part because one nephew was in college on a golf scholarship. She was planning to participate in a golf trip to the Dominican Republic this month, and by then who knew how many countries she would have been up to.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on February 3, 2002.


As a managing director for Marsh Inc., an insurance brokerage unit of Marsh and McLennan Cos., Chicagoan Sue Sauer "was quite passionate about what she did," , colleague Christopher Long recalled.

But, Sauer, 48, a native of Wheaton, had other passions. She loved to travel and hike. In her Chicago office are photographs of her against backdrops of mountains.

She golfed. She did needlepoint, and a few months ago, she attended the Culinary Institute in Napa Valley. She hung out with her five nephews.

Sauer graduated from Wheaton Central High School and Illinois State University. She had worked at Marsh since 1992.

Sauer, who was in Manhattan for a meeting, is among about 300 employees of Marsh and McLennan who are missing after the Sept. 11 attack at the World Trade Center.

"She always had a smile on her face and always maintained a positive attitude," Long said.