UPDATE 9/30: Suzanne Seeman Obituary Released
The jogger killed yesterday in a hit-and-run crash that seriously injured her two companions was Suzanne Wetzel Seemann, an HSU geography lecturer and the wife of Hank Seemann, Humboldt County’s deputy director of environmental services.
Suzanne Seemann specialized in oceanic and atmospheric science, according to a press release from Humboldt State University, which described her as an “extraordinarily talented and popular instructor.”
She has also lectured at the College of the Redwoods, and before coming to Humboldt had worked for the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological and Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
An older resume from her days as a researcher in Madison shows that she had an undergraduate degree from Princeton, and dual masters’ degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institution in environmental engineering and applied ocean physics and engineering.
According to an article in today’s Times-Standard, her survivors include two children, aged 7 and 4. She was 40 years old.
Update 10:29 a.m.: The other two joggers, Terri Vroman-Little, 50, and Jessica Hunt, 41, were in stable condition this morning at St. Joseph Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.
This article appears in To Redeem a Felon.
Our hearts go out to the families and children.
A great loss, I wish I had met her, her education was so vast and she could have educated so many of us in the future. I just don’t understand why she was taken from us so soon. Prayers assending to her loved ones. Cyber hugs to her family and friends.
Margot Bray
Fortuna, CA
It sounds cliche in memorializing a person, but Suzie’s default facial expression was a smile. It was difficult being grumpy around her because you were always met with a smile.
Her meteorological expertise came into play when scheduling preschool playground playdates. You look at the forecast and see rain, but she’d look at the National Weather Service ‘forecast discussion’ (a long technical never-looked-at report issued with forecasts) and tell us the rain won’t come until a couple hours after the playdate and probably will hit south of Eureka (etc.).
She had a way with kids, being encouraging to everyone, helping other parents’ kids kids perk up with enthusiasm and self-confidence when wary alongside her child in swim class and other summertime activities. I’m not surprised to have learned she volunteered at her kids’ school, the loss being felt heavily there. She taught college courses, but she would have made an excellent elementary school teacher, too.
My child and one of her children parted ways after preschool, but she was widely known. There was wailing yesterday in my school parking lot. It is a testament to a person’s life that her absence is being felt by so many.
Rest In Peace