NORWICH — For many years, Suzie Wallis sold sheep fleeces, raw wool and dyed yarn, as well as flowers and vegetables from her family’s garden at the Norwich Farmers’ Market.

“She loved being at the farmers’ market because she’d see her colleagues who worked there but so much of the community would go through as well,” her daughter, Tasha, said.

Wallis was always very community-oriented, whether that meant teaching skiing at Ford Sayre Ski Club, helping to run the Norwich Christmas Pageant, getting “very into Green-Up Day for a while,” working hard to preserve Norwich’s Root Schoolhouse or hosting neighborhood children in backyard tents for the better part of every summer, Tasha said.

The ability to connect with everyone and everything she met, whether of the two-legged or four-legged variety, was a hallmark of Wallis’ personality.

Wallis, who died at age 88 from complications from COVID-19 on Oct. 28, 2024 at Wheelock Terrace in Hanover, was a “force for good in this world, a really positive person,” Wallis’ friend of over 50 years, Ros Orford, said, adding that she was “as kind to animals as she was to humans.”

Born Suzanne White in Milton, Mass., in 1936, Wallis attended Milton High School and studied physical therapy at Boston University’s Sargent College.

In 1957, a friend introduced her to Graham Wallis, a young graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who lived on the same Boston street. On their first date, the two watched Russia’s Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite, from Graham’s roof. They were married two years later.

Wallis started her career assisting polio patients in the mid-1950s. While working in Boston, a supervisor told Wallis that they hadn’t been sure about giving her the job because of her grades in school, but ultimately “she was by far the best person they had at dealing with the patients,” Graham said.

Her ability to be “always straightforward” and unafraid of sharing her true opinions and getting things done was crucial to her success in health care and beyond, Graham said.

After living in Boston and Dorset, England while Graham completed his doctoral work, the couple moved to the Upper Valley when he took a teaching position at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering. 

In 1964, they settled in Norwich, where they raised their four children.

Wallis worked for several years traveling around Vermont to rural homes to provide health care and medical advice. “She liked to help people who needed something,” Graham said.

In the Upper Valley, Wallis’ desire to help people quickly took on new forms and she developed new passions.

“She led a full country life,” Orford said.

Wallis became well-known for her community involvement and her booth at the Norwich Farmers’ Market that was based around her business — Black Sheep and Zucchini Farm.

At its peak, the farm had a flock of 80 sheep, as well as llamas and border collies to protect the flock. “When you have a farm you’re connected to the land in some way that you don’t have in any other way,” Wallis told the Norwich Times in 2005. “You really notice the changing seasons.”

At Wallis’ memorial service in April at the Norwich Congregational Church, Graham read two poems he had written about his wife of 65 years.

“Suzie’s gifts were innate for loving, instinctively practicing art of simple and delightful living close to nature’s heart,” Graham read, while surrounded by over 1,000 daffodils grown in their garden.

After having dogs and cats as house pets, the first farm animal Wallis had was a “lovely” donkey named Dottie Puff that the Wallis kids and their friends used to ride around, Tasha said.

Wallis acquired her first sheep in 1972, just a few years after moving to Norwich. She was “very passionate” about farming, Tasha said.

She hosted wool spinning groups on her front porch, volunteered her sheep as actors in the annual Norwich Christmas Pageant and judged the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival.

“Her house was always full of different wools,” Orford said.

Wallis’ interest in sheep likely came from many sources, Graham and Tasha said, including the years spent living in England in the early 1960s.

The Isle of Skye, a Scottish island well-known for its sheep population, “was one of her favorite places,” Graham, who is English, said.

Another factor was likely Wallis’ exposure to what at the time was a very farming-centric community in Norwich.

“All our neighbors were farmers,” Graham said.

In the early 2000s, Wallis was president of the Norwich Farmers’ Market’s board of directors for several years.

Franny Eanet was the market’s manager from 2000 to 2007 and got to know Wallis during that time.

“She was always a resource to me if I had questions about things and wanted to chat,” Eanet said.

Wallis’ interest in community extended to wild neighbors, Tasha Wallis said, “Every time I’d go to their house she’d report on what the fox family was up to.”

“She was very connected to nature,” Tasha said. “She was very interested in the birds in the backyard and all the different animals and all the things and the seasons. The one thing she didn’t like was coyotes.”

Wallis was “constantly talking about hearing the coyotes at night” and was always looking for new ways to protect her sheep from the predators, Orford said.

Sometimes her connections with animals deepened her relationships with humans.

Orford was one of Wallis’ best friends for over 50 years. At one time, the two had dogs who were also best friends, Orford recalled. They’d take Orford’s dog, Ellie, and Wallis’s dog, Lotta, swimming together in the summer and let them chase each other around the fields in the winter.

As much as Ellie loved Lotta, Ellie also “really loved Suzie.”

“Animals really appreciated her and that I think says a lot about a human being,” Orford said.

Wallis had the ability to relate to people of all backgrounds.

“She’d be out in the field talking to a bunch of farmers about tractors and then later in the evening she’d be at a Dartmouth trustees dinner talking about engineering research,” Tasha said.

When at those dinners with Graham, Wallis assigned herself the special role of connecting with people who seemed like they needed a friend.

“She was good at noticing people who seemed to be out of it and needed someone to go and talk to them,” Graham said.

One of those people was then-undergraduate student John Collier who went on to become a professor at Thayer. 

“When you go to a holiday party and you’re an undergraduate, everyone seems much taller than you are and more solemn and learned,” Collier told the crowd at Wallis’ memorial service.

As Collier joined the annual Thayer holiday party and tried to find his place, Wallis spotted him, made her way over and introduced herself. The next year, despite having one holiday party under his belt, Collier said he still felt that he didn’t “quite know how to approach” the professors in the room.

“In the middle of this, Suzie spies me and comes running over with this big grin and a hello and a huge hug, she says, ‘I’m glad you made it!’ ” Collier said.

In addition to attending Dartmouth parties and dinners, Suzie and Graham often played host to the Dartmouth community, whether it was organizing “magical, fantastic, reckless” skating parties, or inviting international students to enjoy Thanksgiving dinners at their house.

“She always had the right answer about entertaining,” Tasha said at her mother’s service. “ ‘Sure, the Cornell hockey team can come to dinner!’ ”

Wallis’ interests were wide. She was ready and willing to accept an adventure or try something new.

In her later years, Wallis was part of a Scrabble group and often played with Orford. “Playing with Suzie was fun because she didn’t really take it too seriously and she often brought a gift with her,” Orford said, recalling the plants around her Norwich garden that came from Wallis.

Over the years, Wallis also picked up a love of cooking and baking.

“When I was little it was bologna sandwiches and stuff like that and then it just evolved and she baked beautiful bread and she prepared these fabulous meals,” Tasha said.

Baking was just another of the many ways that Wallis “appreciated the beautiful things in this life,” Orford said.

Clare Shanahan can be reached at cshanahan@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.