Sue Leister may have begun her life in a quiet town in Oklahoma but through her travels she became aware of the desperate needs of street orphans in Ethiopia and took it upon herself to spearhead an effort to create an organization to help them, 8000 miles away from Oklahoma.

Sue was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, into a family of two brothers. Her father was a Savings and Loan Bank Manager and her mother a math and English teacher. The family moved twice, to Shawnee and Kingfisher, Oklahoma, farming communities where Sue remembers playing with friends, riding bikes, frequenting the local swimming pools and attending summer camp. Her high school graduating class had 37 students. The family attended a Southern Baptist Church multiple times a week. 

There was never any question in the family that all the children would attend college and Sue went to Oklahoma State. Her sophomore year she met an older student who was an art major. When he graduated, Sue dropped out of college and married him. Since Glenn Leister was in ROTC, he joined the Army and became a pilot who served two tours in Vietnam and made the Army his career.  Sue and Glenn moved around the world with their growing family of five children. They lived in Turkey, Germany, New Jersey, Texas, Kansas, California, Georgia, Alabama and Virginia.

Sue and Glenn were married 50 years and made sure to enjoy all the locations in which they lived, visiting local markets, restaurants, parks, attractions and school activities with their children. Pizza pie was first sampled in New Jersey, Georgia peaches, gooseberries in Kansas, barbecue in Texas and local crowder beans in Alabama. All were highlights, as was the history and culture surrounding each assignment.   

After their children were older, Sue returned to school, earned a degree in special education and taught children with learning disabilities for 20 years before retiring. She served in schools with Black populations, starting in Augusta, Georgia and was distressed with the lack of basic resources such as books and general classroom supplies. As Glenn was stationed in other locations, Sue continued to serve populations of minority children. 

Sue and Glenn retired in Virginia. Sue enjoyed book and creative writing groups while Glenn enjoyed aviation, writing and flying. Together, they had an antique business for about 10 years. Sue loved China, silver and linens; Glenn loved anything with gears or rust!

Sue had an opportunity to travel to Ethiopia with her cousin because her son was working in a hospital there. After much discussion, consultation and numerous trips to Ethiopia, Sue started a 501c3, Hearts Full of Happy, to help orphans get an education. After considerable work helping individual students attend school, she helped establish a school for these orphans, complete with uniforms and school supplies. Sue’s efforts have resulted in a school that educates 500 children from 1st to 6th grade. Many of the children who attended the school have been able to graduate from high school and university with help from Hearts Full of Happy. Sue has been able to stay in touch with several of these street orphans, who are now adults, well-educated and successfully employed. The daughter of one family with whom she does video calls refers to Sue as her “white grandmother from America!”

For years, Sue made annual trips to Ethiopia, staying for three to ten weeks to support these community efforts. Always ready to help families, she once needed to go by herself to a market to buy a donkey for a mother who earned 50 cents a day carrying mountains of firewood on her back to sell, getting badly bruised and cut in the process. (Sue learned a lot about how to select a good donkey!)  Her non-profit also bought a cow for a widowed man with four children. His dream was of having manure with which to plaster his hut along with milk for his children. 

On her very first day in the remote town of Tulgit, she was invited by the gardener at the home where she was staying, to a Suri Tribal wedding in the bush where she was the only English speaker and the huts were made of saplings and brush. Many of the children had never seen a white woman with white hair; the women wore only skirts, wore lip rings and earlobe rings, and the men, no clothes whatsoever. Amid the drums and excitement and at the urging of the women, she joined in the dancing and ululating (the celebratory, high pitched ‘trilling’ done by women), swaying, stomping and waving her arms until she needed to return to Tulgit. 

During her many trips to Ethiopia, she took various children and grandchildren. As a result of these experiences, one college aged granddaughter returned to Ethiopia with Sue four times and switched her major to public health and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. She is working at the Rutgers Cancer Institute as program director for community outreach. Another granddaughter was so moved by these trips that she switched her major from political science to nursing and works at St. Anthony Hospital.

Sue’s five children live in Phoenix, Virginia, New Jersey and Denver. Glenn passed away in 2006. After living alone for about two years in Virginia, Sue wanted to live closer to family and moved to a home in Central Park (Stapleton area). Given Glenn’s college major of fine arts, their children gravitated toward the arts, with one son being a fine artist and another being a “luthier” who makes stringed instruments and specializes in custom made violins.

While in Denver, Sue has volunteered as an Ollie instructor, leading multiple classes on Africa and memoir writing.  She enjoys attending a writing group, lectures, keeping up with current events, traveling and being with friends and family.

One Christmas, shortly after coming to Denver, Sue saw an invitation from Montview inviting people to the Christmas concert. Sue attended and was so impressed with the music that she began attending regularly. Serving on the Mission Committee was a natural fit and her expertise was most welcome.  Sue continues to stream Montview’s Sunday services and tries to attend in person about once a month.

Sue’s early experience in her family growing up and going to school with Indigenous classmates, living and raising children in two foreign countries and seven states, working in schools of all Black children and getting to know the plight of orphan children and rural families in Ethiopia, has shaped her life in ways that she could not have imagined growing up in Oklahoma. Over the decades, Sue’s curiosity, kindness, generosity and patience have helped her leave a legacy of hope for children and families who had little before they met her.

– Submitted by Brooke Durland