Susie Harwood Journal Entry – December 12, 1894
“I have certainly had a (unidentifiable word) career and a rather painful one. Last night, to horrified amazement – Mr. McClusky asked me to postpone the wedding until Spring. I asked and begged him to give me a reason but he never did. However I am convinced that it is because I have lost some of my money and the realization is anything but gratifying. So I have decided to postpone it indefinitely and shall take the necessary steps at once. The dishonorable rascal will certainly be punished. How I loathe him. If I were only a man now, for a little while.”
Susie Harwood VanLandingham, born in the late 1860′s in St. Paul, Minnesota, was an outstanding human being. In 1881, she moved with her family to Volusia County, Florida, where her father, Norman B. Harwood, became a high official with the Florida East Coast Railroad then being developed by Henry Morrison Flagler. After her father’s death in 1885, she moved with her mother, Susan Drury Deane Harwood, to Atlanta, Ga. It was here that she would meet Ralph VanLandingham and would become his wife on September 17, 1901. In the intervening years, however, Susie demonstrated that she had acquired considerable executive ability. She was one of the founders of the Atlanta Art Association. She was an officer of the Atlanta Y.M.C.A. Even more significantly, she headed the company which built the first fire-proof hotel in the State of Georgia.
Mrs. VanLandingham continued to be active in civic affairs in the years following her arrival in North Carolina. The Charlotte News characterized her as “a woman of rare gifts and a person of unmistakable quality.” Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of Mrs. Ralph VanLandingham the newspaper asserted, “was the range and depth of her interests.” She served as regent of the Halifax Convention Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution. She was Chairman of the North Carolina Board of Approved Schools. She was president of the Board of St. Peter’s Hospital, where she financed the building of the emergency waiting room in honor of her mother. Probably her most notable contribution, for which she received a personal commendation from President Woodrow Wilson, was her supervision of the Red Cross Canteen at Camp Greene during World War I. Finally, Mrs. VanLandingham provided generous support to the Crossnore Industrial School for Mountain Children near Linville, N.C. She died at St. Peter’s Hospital on September 26, 1937.
