Susie Godwin

As much as I have enjoyed reading the bios from our class, I have procrastinated about writing one. Recent life experiences have taught me that degrees received and accomplishments checked off aren’t what matter. Lifelong friendships do matter and I am lucky to have several from high school. Yes, “the Gang” still stays in close touch. When Michelle’s daughter, Emily died last month none of us thought twice about hopping on a plane to fly down to be with her.

With that said, here goes the 20-year account:

I attended Colorado College in Colorado Springs. For me the best part of college was the “block breaks” when I climbed, hiked, biked through and played in the Colorado outdoors. Some of my outdoor adventures even took me as far as the California wine country and the Grand Canyon. I stayed close to Sheila Ruminer and senior year we lived together with 5 other women in the “Pink Palace”, an old Victorian home off-campus.

I spent one summer slaving away as a maid in Glacier National Park but I got to backpack all through the park and had wildlife encounters with grizzlies and mountain lions.

In 1991 I lived in Fort Collins doing research at CSU and I lived with Julia (Atwater) Chenoweth ’89. We traveled down to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and ran into Dean Klingner. The rest of my summer research involved finding mountains in southern Colorado in which to meet up with Dean.

After college, Dean and I spent a summer in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I dressed up in Little House on the Prairie skirts and tight Wranglers and worked on a dude ranch and Dean grew out his hair and bike-taxied drunks from bar to bar and flipped pizzas at Mountain High Pizza Pie. The summer included a helicopter evacuation off Mount Teewinot for Susie but luckily I had “merely flesh wounds.”

During the winter of 1992-1993 I ski patrolled at Santa Fe Ski Basin. I practiced veganism and lived with a crystal reader and homeopath for the full Santa Fe experience.

In medical school at UNM I reconnected with Jennifer (Hanson) Kempers. We studied many hours together but also gardened and cooked and trained for a few rounds of the Mount Taylor Quadrathalon and some triathlons and runs. I spent a summer in Mexico doing research in Mexico City and then Dean met up with me and we traveled for 5 weeks. In 1996 Dean and I got married outside of Santa Fe.

Before residency Dean and I biked through the Alps in Southern Germany. We stayed with Bettina Weiguny, the foreign exchange student who attended LAHS in 1987.

We have been in Fort Collins since 1997. I did residency here in Family Medicine. Shortly after a “let’s get pregnant in a year” conversation in 1999 we were surprised to find out that I already was pregnant. Zach was born in September 1999. In 2000 I joined, Associates in Family Medicine, a large group practice. I am lucky to be able to work part-time with a job-share. Dean says that I have the only 80-hour per week part-time job he has ever heard of. I work in the office only 3 days so that I can be with the kids and volunteer in their classes. I do full spectrum family practice but the biggest portions of my practice are obstetrics and pediatrics and I deliver my own patients so I am on call at all times. In Family Medicine I see a lot of depressing and incurable diseases (depression, alcoholism, Alzheimers…) so delivering babies keeps me positive and I love it.

In 2001 Molly was born.

Outside of work I enjoy cooking with the vegetables from our CSA (community supported agriculture) farm, gardening, reading books for book club, knitting, crafting, biking, telemark skiing, and running.

Dean works at the City as an engineer and is a passionate father, backcountry skier, biker, independent film-watcher and has picked up photography and movie-making recently.

Zach, now 8, is our natural athlete. He picks up almost any sport he tries but his best is skateboarding. The teenagers at our local skate park think that he is a prodigy. He likes to tell jokes, do legos and talk about Star Wars and Harry Potter.

Molly, now 6, wants to be a “mother and a teacher” when she grows up. She loves to play with babies, sing songs, make us laugh, and do the monkey bars.

We inherited a 1986 VW Vanagon from Dean’s parents and some of our best family memories are camping and traveling together in it. Last year we went 3400 miles through Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Montana and then camped with friends on the Oregon coast.

For the rest: “a picture’s worth a thousand words”