Susan INGHAM

Susan Ingham Padwee

(Deceased 2019)

Susan's 2011 Autobiography

I initially attended Bates College in Maine. Its small, New England insularity soon drove me to New York University where I majored in English and lived what I hoped was a bohemian life in the West and East Villages. During my senior year I married my first husband. Following graduation in 1965, I became a social worker, and we became involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements, organizing and attending demonstrations. The marriage ended four years later. In 1969 I enrolled at Columbia’s School of Social Work. While in school I became involved in the woman’s movement and married my second (and current) husband, Michael. I graduated in 1972 and our son, Aaron, was born about nine months later. Michael and I continued to work at the New York City Department of Social Services in the field of foster care and adoption and were active in women’s, anti-war and socialist politics. I also became a weaver in the late sixties. One of my wall hangings is in the permanent collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. My work has been exhibited at Soho Tapestries and the Grace Borgenicht Gallery, both in Manhattan, and the Boston Atheneum. My weavings are also in private and corporate collections.

In 1973 we moved from Manhattan to the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, and bought an 1891 brownstone row house in 1978. It needed a lot of work. Previous owners had painted all the woodwork and I determined to remove it all, a project I worked on intermittently until about three years ago, when I finally decided to hire someone to finish the job.

In 1988, I had a sort of mid-life crisis and decided to take some courses about antiques; before I knew it I found myself matriculated as a very part-time student in a master’s program in the history of decorative arts jointly offered by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and Parson’s School of Design. It took me eleven years to graduate, but I really enjoyed the classes and especially writing my thesis on an obscure tile company that operated in Brooklyn in the 1880s.

As a social worker I had gradually increasing supervisory and administrative responsibilities in a variety of fields including the supervision of contracts with area undergraduate and graduate schools of social work, and in home care services for elderly and impaired adults. I retired in 1999, as did Michael, and have been blissfully unemployed ever since. I have used the time to work on the house and have lectured and written about decorative arts. I co-authored a book about English decorative transfer tiles, as yet unpublished. Currently I am writing a monograph about H. Van Buren Magonigle, an early twentieth-century architect, who designed the Maine Memorial on Columbus Circle among many other memorial, institutional, and residential works. We have also, like most retirees, had more opportunity to travel, and have recently returned from Istanbul, where we saw the magnificent 16th century Iznik tiles that decorate the mosques and Topkapi Palace.

Our son Aaron, a real renaissance man, graduated from college with many credits in photography, architecture, and geography. He has worked as a horticulturist and carpenter and has a strong interest in sustainable agriculture and construction. He is currently a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees with whom he has worked on television and movie sets, such as “The Good Wife,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and, currently, “Damages.”

Susan Ingham, Judy Wilcox, Suzi Sloat, Jim Horelick

Susan’s Update, provided by her husband, Michael Padwee

Since this autobiography was published in 2011 Susan passed away from exacerbated COPD in 2019. This was ten months after our son, Aaron, was killed in a preventable traffic crash, while riding his bike. When she died, Susan had just finished her monograph about H. Van Buren Magonigle, and was looking for a publisher. Susan was also co-authoring a monograph on the stained and dalle de verre glass artist Robert Pinart at the time of her death. Although the pandemic precluded a live memorial service, Susan and Aaron have trees planted near each other in Prospect Park.