Susan Suchocki Brown

Class of 1977

At 27, Susan Suchocki Brown was raising two children and working as an administrative assistant at a local substance abuse treatment facility. She realized she “wasn’t ever going to get anywhere if I didn’t have an education.”

First, she had to earn her GED, since she left high school to get married. Despite being “scared to death” about going to college, she then enrolled in Mount Wachusett Community College’s human services program.

“I remember that one of the things that every professor tried to do was make you interested in learning,” Brown said. “They never put me down for being an older student who had life experiences but no educational experiences.”

In particular, then-Professors Pete Trinchero and Pete Trainor and then-Librarian Mason Parker fostered leadership traits she didn’t realize she had, she recalled.

With their encouragement, she transferred to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where she earned a bachelor’s degree. After 18 years of working in the substance abuse treatment field, Brown decided to become a minister. She enrolled in Andover-Newton Theological School, earning a master’s degree in 1992 and a doctorate in 2002.

As a minister, Brown has served the congregation of Leominster’s First Church Unitarian Universalist as well as the greater community for many years. In addition to sitting on committees of local nonprofit organizations, such as the United Way of North Central Massachusetts, she co-founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Coalition, which sponsors an annual ceremony to honor King’s civil rights work. Brown is also the chaplain of the Leominster Fire Department.

Nationally, she has chaired the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Journey Toward Wholeness Transformation Committee, founded the Unitarian Universalist Trauma Response Ministry and counseled recovery workers at the World Trade Center site following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“Some days I wake up and shake my head. How did all this happen?” Brown said. “If they (MWCC faculty and staff) hadn’t encouraged me, I never would have done it.”