Susan Schock

Sue lived her life as a smart and curious person always in the pursuit of learning. Born Susan Charlotte Stock in Buffalo, New York, she was the third child and first girl of the nine children from Hugh John and Mary (Stahl) Stock. Sue came to study geology at Buffalo State for her BS degree, and at Michigan State for her MS degree. She continued learning throughout her life and also did graduate study in economic and environmental geography for several years at University of Cincinnati. Working in Geology and Environmental Sciences for her professional career, she was accomplished in her field. She spent much of her career with the Environmental Protection Agency where she was versatile and worked in areas as varied as logistics of health effects studies to training specialists for cleaning up Super Fund Sites. In nine years with the Illinois State Water Survey in Champaign, IL, she worked on developing monitoring networks and databases for ground water contamination throughout the state. She loved the planet and could be found adopting wolves at a Wolf Park in Indiana or Sea Lions at the Cincinnati Zoo when not walking on volcanoes in Hawaii and watching Old Faithful spouting at sunset from Yellowstone's Lodge, or seeing aurora and a total eclipse of the sun at 40,000 feet from a plane off the coast of Iceland.
Her curiosity led her to travel and explore our world. From Prague to Paris, and Canada, Germany, Chile and Switzerland, she enjoyed visiting new places and learning about new cultures; and did so with her husband Michael, and sometimes with her sisters Barb and Ann on their sister trips which sometimes included dropping in on other family. She shared that love with her daughters Christine and Sarah. They spent one summer with her driving across the United States together camping in National Parks and KOAs where she played guitar and sang by campfire light.
Some of her fondest reminiscences are of family reunions where her brothers and sisters came from across the country to play together, sing together, and celebrate their parents and each other together with their growing families. These led her to work with other family members on the genealogy, which is an ongoing project of which she was proud. She loved music, and played piano, guitar and was learning Irish harp, when she became increasingly disabled by Parkinson's Disease.
Susan had a smile that was contagious. Beautiful both inside and out, she will be very much missed.
She is survived by her husband of 42 years, Michael Schock; her daughter Sarah and husband Scott Brancato; her daughter Christine and husband James Bluemond with her two grandchildren Emma and Ben.
In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory can be made to her frequent charities, WCET TV (PBS), WVXU (NPR), The Parkinson's Foundation, and Wolf Park, or other environmental charities of your choice.