Editor’s note: This is one of a continuing online series of profiles of the more than 12,000 Hoosiers who have died from COVID-19. The stories are from 12 Indiana newspapers, including The Republic, who collaborated to create the collection to highlight the tremendous loss that the pandemic has created. The series appears daily at therepublic.com.
Name: Susan Enlow
Town: Evansville
Age: 85
Died: Dec. 1
Susan Enlow, a local philanthropist and member of the Enlow family who formerly owned The Evansville Courier, died Dec. 1 at the age of 85 after contracting COVID-19.
Family and friends remembered her as a one-of-a-kind woman with a generous soul, a passion for education and a dedication to her community.
“She taught me a lot of things I normally would’ve never experienced, and I am who I am because I got to be in her life,” said Norma Lawrence, who first met Enlow when she was hired on to work at Enlow’s gift and home accessories store in McCutchanville in the mid-1990s.
Lawrence later became a buyer for Enlow. The pair grew incredibly close. Lawrence called Enlow her “No. 2,” like she was her second mother. Lawrence left the store in 2000, but the two remained close and spent most holidays together.
“She was the one person I called when I needed to ask anybody anything,” she said. “She would give it to you straight. There was no hiding behind the bush with her. I could call her, and I knew I’d get an honest opinion, whether I’d like to hear it or not.”
Enlow was also heavily involved in charitable efforts. She had a particular passion for promoting learning, especially for the less fortunate.
She served on the executive board of The Stony Brook School, a Christian college preparatory school on Long Island, New York, for years. There, she helped raise funds so low-income students of color from New York City could have a high-quality boarding school education, her son, Robert Enlow, said.
Susan Enlow also sat on the board of a number of local institutions, including Joshua Academy, Youth Resources of Southwestern Indiana, the Evansville Philharmonic and the Mesker Park Zoo Foundation. She was a long-time supporter of the University of Southern Indiana and served on the board of the USI Foundation.
Enlow established the first scholarship for African Americans at USI and had an endowed presidential scholarship.
Her grandfather, C.B. Enlow, helped Benjamin Bosse buy The Evansville Courier in 1921. Her father, Robert Enlow, gained control of the publication in 1952 after acquiring a majority of its stock. When he died in 1968, the paper was put in a trust headed by his widow, Rossanna Enlow.
The paper remained in the family’s hands until it was sold to Scripps Howard in 1986.
— By the Evansville Courier Press
