Everyone Has A Story — Faith and family

By Rebecca Hattaway

October 20, 2009 — Throughout her more than six decades of life, Claremore resident Sue Ingle has overcome adversity time and time again.

When faced teen pregnancy, divorce and cancer, she has relied on her faith to carry her through.

Born in Broken Arrow, Sue was 4 when her family moved to California where her father had the opportunity to go into business with his brother and brother-in-law. The three men ran a gas station, garage, motel, cafe, tow truck service and ambulance service in the Mojave Desert.

“I went to a one-room school for eight grades in Baker, Calif.,” she said. “It was in the middle of the desert. I remember it being 120 degrees at midnight. You couldn’t sleep.”

When it was time for her to start high school, Sue’s father moved the family to Barstow where she could attend a regular school.

“At 16 I had a daughter,” Sue said. “Nobody knew I was pregnant until at six and a half months along I fell and broke a bone in my back. The ambulance took me to the hospital where they did x-rays of my back — that’s how my parents found out.”

The stigma carried by out-of-wedlock pregnancy at the time caused Sue’s family to send her to Oakland, Calif. to have the baby where they had been in contact with a couple interested in adoption.

Her family told everyone who asked that Sue was sent there to be treated by a specialist for her back.

“Back then it was humiliating,” Sue said. “My mother’s whole life was ‘what will the neighbors think?’ It was the generation she was brought up in.”

Sue was reunited with her daughter 45 years later after a series of events culminated with their first meeting in July 2002.

“I just needed to know she was happy and okay,” Sue said. “She told me that before she got my call she was driving one day and thought to herself, ‘I wish my birth mother would try to find me.’ So it was all ordained of God and when the timing was right, God prepared her heart for my call. We talked for hours. I was thankful to find out she had a wonderful family who loved her and gave her a wonderful life.”

Today, Sue and Kim enjoy a close relationship and travel to see each other frequently.

“After I had her I went to summer school and got caught up with my class,” Sue said. “The next year was senior year. I graduated on Thursday and got married that Saturday. My main ambition in life was always to be a mother.”

And a mother she was, having four more children: Mark, Steve, Kurt and Tami.

After Sue’s mother moved back to Broken Arrow from California, Sue and her kids visited her on vacation in April 1977.

“They loved it in Oklahoma,” she said. “My cousins took them hunting and fishing — they had such a good time they didn’t want to go home.”

The family was living in Apple Valley, Calif. at the time where Sue, now a single mother following her divorce, worked at a cafe.

“I got to go motorcycle riding with Roy Rogers,” she said. “He would come by the cafe for coffee and then take me for a ride.”

Her children where so adamant about moving to Oklahoma that after three months back in California the family packed up two U-Haul trucks.

“I didn’t tell my mother we were coming; we just showed up!,” she smiled.

While her children were growing up, Sue poured her life into her chosen role of mother.

She served as president of the Quarterback Club.

“My three sons played football and I decided we were going to raise enough money for a football stadium which the school didn’t have,” she said. “I went out and raised the first $8,000. The first game in the new stadium was going to be played the year we left Apple Valley — but they did get a stadium.”

Sue was also president of the PTA and started a Cub Scout pack and later a Boy Scout troop.

“I had a wonderful time. I wouldn’t trade those years for anything,” she said.

In Oklahoma, her sons continued to play football at Catoosa and then at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kan.

It was in 1995 that Sue was diagnosed with breast cancer, which set off a series of health issues within the family. Her nurturing instincts were put to use once again as caregiver for both her second husband, Robert Hahn, and her mother before their deaths a few years apart.

In 2005 Sue signed up to volunteer at Safenet Services’ Second Impressions Resale Outlet.

“Then they asked me to manage the (Second Impressions) Boutique and I love it,” she said. “I love to help people — that gives me such great joy, especially women who have been down and out like I have been. I think that’s why the Lord allowed me to go through those things — so I could say, ‘I’ve been there.’ I have made lots of wonderful friends — I’ve just been blessed over and over again. When women come in with no purpose and nothing to do, I tell them to volunteer.”

She also enjoys using her creativity to decorate the store windows and put outfits together.

“The people of Claremore are so generous. We have great donations — all name brand clothing,” she said. “Every woman in Claremore can afford to dress well at our prices.”

Besides volunteering, Sue enjoys singing, cooking, reading and collecting antiques.

Of course, her mother’s heart treasures her family most of all. She has 25 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren with another on the way.

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