Suzanne Perrin Kloman

1921 - 2022

KLOMAN

SUZANNE PERRIN KLOMAN

Suzanne Perrin Kloman died on December 23, 2022, in Chestertown, Maryland. She was 101 years old. She died 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 and then Westover School in Connecticut. She studied for one year at Bennington College, before withdrawing to recuperate from pleurisy.

During World War II, after her hopes of becoming an Air Force transport pilot were dashed by her need to wear glasses, she joined the U.S. Marine Corps. She trained in 1943 at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina 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. She was a supportive political wife and an accomplished hostess during her husband's career as a Congressman from New York, his jobs in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and as a candidate for Governor of New York. The marriage ended in divorce in 1970.

In the 1970s, Suzanne held a full-time volunteer job at Call for Action, a nonprofit founded by her friend Ellen Strauss. Suzanne became the organization's Regional Coordinator, helping branches in 49 cities across the country establish and run volunteer call-in centers to assist citizens in addressing difficulties with issues such as bad landlords and poor medical care.

In 1975, she married Erasmus H. Kloman, a government consultant. Upon his retirement, the couple enjoyed four decades of traveling the world together, returning frequently to France, where Suzanne's excellent French served them well. Kloman died in 2018.

In the 1980s, Suzanne earned a degree in landscape architecture and started a landscape design business with a friend, Stratton McKillop. Designing gardens for friends and friends of friends, the two made their mark upon Washington, DC, and beyond.

Suzanne was a gourmet cook, an organic gardener before most people had even heard of the term "organic," a strident environmentalist, and an avid reader who loved detective novels and books that made her cry. She was an aficionado of the Sunday Washington Post funny papers, was devoted to horses, cats, and basset hounds, and had a passion for seals and owls. 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, D.C.

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. She will be missed by her beloved cat, Chloe.

A memorial service will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, please send a donation to either the Natural Resources Defense Council or the Nature Conservancy.