Suzanne Kent

March 25, 1923 - January 31, 2021

Suzanne Kent, who was director of the Hawken Lower School in Lyndhurst, Ohio, and was active in many educational and civic causes in the Cleveland area, died Jan. 31 in Sleepy Hollow, New York. She was 97. Kent, a graduate of Cleveland Heights High School and Ohio State University, trained as a reading specialist and began teaching at the Lower School in 1960. She became head of the Reading Department in 1971, director of the Lower School in 1988 and retired in 1992. She lived in Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights and Beachwood, Ohio. She was an active member of the League of Women Voters, taught English to immigrants at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights and led classes on comparative religion as a Living Room Learning volunteer. She married Stanley B. Kent, who served as an Army Japanese language specialist in World War II. He became an attorney in private practice and then chief of 30 law clerks who assisted judges with their verdicts at Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. His monthly column in the journal of the Ohio State Bar Association kept every lawyer in the state updated on the latest developments in state law. After her husband’s death in 2010, she moved to the New York area to be closer to family members. She is survived by her son, Thomas Kent, her daughter-in-law, Sophie Arielle Kent, and two grandsons, Alexander and Gregory Kent. The family has requested that donations in her memory be sent to PEO, an educational charity, at 3700 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50312. Checks should be marked for New York chapter AJ, Scholarships.