Rita Sue Smallwood

Sue Smallwood of Noblesville Indiana, age 80, passed away on July 21st, 2024 at St. Vincent's Hospital in Indianapolis after suffering a stroke.

Sue is survived by her husband Greg, son Chris, daughter Suzanne, two granddaughters Katie and Nicole and eight great grandchildren. 

Sue, the daughter of Mae Ruth and George Turner, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on July 19th 1944. A graduate of Moorseville High School, she attended college at Indiana-Purdue University. 

Sue's life reflected her diversified interests, passions and entrepreneurial drive. Her career was equally diversified. She worked as an administrative secretary for three physicians and an outpatient dialysis center in Tampa Florida. Upon moving back to Indiana to help care for her ailing father, she worked for four law professors at the Indiana University Law School in Indianapolis where she also provided administrative support to an arbitration attorney and coordinated annual regional NLRLB seminars. 

Restless and seeking new challenges, Sue joined an Indianapolis based promotion company as the sales department secretary and rose to the position of the sales department's vice president. Sue's business acumen persistence and tenacity were personified when she negotiated her VP salary package with the company's owner at an area restaurant. When the owner balked while reading Sue's salary proposal. She said “Bruce, money talks and Bull S__t walks” as she gathered her purse and walked out of the restaurant. Bruce ran after her... Sue got the salary package she wanted.

After five years on the road and living out of suitcases, Sue decided to pursue residential real estate with Century 21 and F.C. Tucker. In real estate she routinely demonstrated her instinctive sales insights and was often known to have the scent of freshly baked bread filling her listings during open houses. Though driven to achieve excellence, Sue always put family first and when her granddaughter was born six weeks premature with holes in her heart, Sue walked away from a successful real estate career to take care her infant granddaughter until she was strong enough to undergo open heart surgery at Riley Children's Hospital.

Reentering the workforce after a year and half, she worked for various healthcare nonprofits in fundraising, special event planning and leadership capacities. When Sue's mother was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, she again put family first and provided end-of-life care for her mother in her mother's home by herself.

After her mother's passing, Sue pursued her entrepreneurial dream starting an antique shop in Pendleton Indiana specializing antiques, period reproductions with a blend of decorating services. Ye Olde Keeping Room was where Sue shined and her passion for interior design, color and unique offerings blended seamlessly. Her days began with Patti LaBelle's New Attitude playing on the store's sound system. It was here at the Keeping Room where Sue forged new life long friendships, fine tuned her interior design expertise and regained her joy. Compassion and generosity flowed from her effortlessly as demonstrated when an 11 year boy came into her shop. He wanted to buy his mother the “best Christmas gift ever”. He had $11.00. Sue sold him a hundred dollar item for $11.00. Best Christmas gift ever for that young man and his mother.

After retiring from the Keeping Room for health reasons, Sue continued her interior design practice staging customers' homes, designing landscapes and refinishing antique furniture. Even as her health deteriorated with a degenerative neurological disease, emphysema, scoliosis and osteoporosis, Sue applied her design expertise to her circa 1888 home in Noblesville. Seeing the spacial relationships between objects, textures and colors, Sue's home and English garden became her form of therapy, exercise and joy until the day she suffered a stroke.

Cremation at Indiana Funeral Care in Indianapolis will follow a private family service.