4 June 2012 The holiday letter from George and Susan Chamberlain, no doubt written by Susan, overflowed with chatty updates about their children, all grown and pursuing their careers and, typical of Susan, few details about her own activities. A few days after receiving the letter, we learned that Susan had passed away. It was heartrending news that came as a total shock to the hundreds of people around the world who knew and cared about her. I met Susan while teaching aquaculture in the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences at Texas A&M University. One fall semester in 1976, a lovely young woman and a rather scruffy-looking graduate student Susan Ball Chamberlain: A retrospective Susan’s interest in aquaculture endured throughout her life, as did her interest in George. When they met, he was driving a beat up white Jeep, formerly used by the Postal Service for mail delivery, with the steering wheel on the right. I never knew if it was his good looks, engaging personality or that distinctive old Jeep that first attracted Susan. In any case, their relationship blossomed into a strong marriage, a loving family with four fine children, and an energetic partnership that contributed to the robust growth of the aquaculture industry and its voluntary adoption of needed environmental protection standards. Over the years, Susan’s contributions, though usually behind-the-scenes, were critical to the success of many projects. In 1994, when the World Aquaculture Society’s magazine was running far behind schedule, George, as WAS president, volunteered to take on the issue. “It meant recruiting and editing articles, selling advertising, finding photos, preparing layout, and arranging for printing and distribution,” he recalled. “I quickly got overwhelmed and would have failed if Susan hadn’t stepped in. She reviewed previous issues for fonts, formats, headings, etc., adopted the style, and set a target content. After a couple months of gathering articles and selling ads, she discovered that we exceeded our goals for advertising and articles and had enough content for a 128-page issue.” A potential failure turned into an outstanding issue that reached 8500 readers including participants at the World Aquaculture ’95 conference in San Diego. It leapfrogged the magazine ahead by three months, and the extra content helped expedite subsequent issues. As Director of Aquaculture at Ralston Purina International, George saw an opportunity to connect Purina’s aquaculture feed customers with the excellent information presented at WAS conferences. He arranged an incentive travel program, where customers who purchased enough feed could qualify for a free trip to the annual meeting. Customer travel arrangements became a huge challenge due to the individual changes that each country requested almost daily. Again Susan took over, making travel arrangements for about 150 customers from regional offices in six countries and coordinating registration of all participants at the WAS meeting. After the trip, she finalized the accounting details and arranged for billing or reimbursement of customers and countries as needed. She finished with a complete, auditable accounting record of detailed reports and spreadsheets. According to George, “Susan was the real unsung hero of the conference for many international participants who could never have attended without her help.” Susan sorting benthos at the Texas A&M University Aquaculture Resesrch Center in 1977. showed up for my aquaculture class. It soon became clear that Susan Ball and George Chamberlain were more interested in each other than in my undoubtedly stimulating lectures, yet somehow they managed to get high grades for the course. Susan produced a solid undergraduate research project, “Density and Temperature Effects on Overwintered Tilapia aurea,” and I eventually hired her to work in my laboratory. She was tasked with sorting, counting and identifying benthic organisms collected for a project that involved establishing a salt marsh on dredge material. Susan’s job was boring, repetitive work, but she was tenacious, efficient and precise.
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