SUZANNE KLOMAN

KLOMAN--Suzanne. Suzanne Perrin Kloman died on December 23, 2022, in Chestertown, MD, at 101 years old of natural causes. Born on May 2, 1921, to Lee James Perrin, a New York City attorney, and Hilda Bull Perrin, Suzanne spent her childhood in New York City and at a family country house on Long Island, where she developed her lifelong passion for riding horses. She attended the Chapin School in Manhattan, Westover School in Connecticut and Bennington College. With the onset of World War II she felt a strong need to do something to help the war effort. Her hopes of becoming an Air Force transport pilot were dashed by her need to wear glasses so she joined the U.S. Marine Corps and spent the rest of the war years teaching celestial navigation to pilots. In 1949, she married Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., whose mother, Eleanor Roosevelt, considered Suzanne her favorite daughter-in-law. That marriage ended in divorce in 1970. In 1975, she married Erasmus H. Kloman, a government consultant. In the 1980s, Suzanne earned a degree in landscape architecture and started a landscape design business with her friend, Stratton McKillop. Suzanne was a gourmet cook, an organic gardener before most people had even heard of the term "organic," an ardent environmentalist, and an avid reader. She loved words and crossword puzzles and was a self-proclaimed grammarian whom biographer Joseph Lash asked to line-edit his Pulitzer prize-winning book Eleanor and Franklin. She had a great sense of humor and fun and particularly loved her 50 years living in Washington, DC. Suzanne is survived by two daughters, Nancy Roosevelt Ireland of Greenwich, CT and Laura Roosevelt of West Tisbury, MA, their spouses, Thomas Ireland and Charles Silberstein, five grandchildren: Kate, Perrin, and Julia Ireland, and Truda and Oliver Silberstein. She is also survived by three stepsons: Frank Roosevelt and his wife Jinx, Chris Roosevelt and his wife Roddy, and Alec Kloman and his wife Danielle. In lieu of flowers, please send a donation to either the Natural Resources Defense Council or the Nature Conservancy.