DOVER HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF '69

THEN & NOW
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SUSAN COHEN
Contact info:
Phone - (513) 382-7523
E-mail - susieq@isoc.net

1969	2009

In the spring of 2009 I will have lived in Cincinnati , Ohio , for 20 years.  Why Cincinnati ?  After DHS I attended The American University in Washington , D.C. (May Louie and I were roommates).  Graduated with a degree in communications (majoring in radio-TV-film) and started a career in radio at WDEL/WSTW in Wilmington , DE .  Continued at WCHL in Chapel Hill , N.C. and WKQQ-FM in Lexington , KY.   Then moved to Atlanta , GA. , where I landed a job as an assistant in a regional publicity office for Universal Pictures.  (Noticed during the job interview that the last 4 digits of my home phone number and work number matched.  Eerie).

After three years I was promoted to manage Universal’s Eastern/Midwest office in Cincinnati .  Shortly after moving to the “ Queen City ,” I received a surprise phone call from fellow classmate Ed Albertson.  How serendipitous to learn that he and his wife, Beth (Pearthree), had moved to Cincinnati , too. It gave us a great opportunity to rekindle our friendship.

During the next ten years with Universal Pictures, I helped implement the marketing campaigns for some of the biggies, including Schindler’s List, Apollo 13, Jurassic Park and Field of Dreams.  Had the opportunity to meet interesting people (Steven Spielberg, Liam Neeson, Fievel Mousekevitz) and have grand adventures (hunting down a tanning bed at 2 a.m. for Jean Claude Van Dam, escorting porn queen Traci Lords to the Larry King Show, shipping Kevin Kline’s missing pajamas).  By the time Universal downsized their field offices (’99), I had married a wonderful guy from Cincinnati, Rob Schmuelling, and we were having our own grand adventures, both afar-- Scotland, Italy, Nova Scotia—and in our own backyard.

In 2000 I joined the staff of Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, an off Broadway-type theatre, as PR/Marketing Director, and for five years helped promote incredible live theatre:  the world premiere of Warren Leight’s James and Annie, the regional premieres of I Am My Own Wife, The Exonerated, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, to name a few.  In 2005 I left the theatre to do freelance writing and independent PR and marketing projects.  Most recently I helped produce and publicize Above the 37th Parallel, a one-woman play written by a dear friend, Nancy Jones, about “life, love, and living with multiple sclerosis,” which raised $30,000 for local MS research.

Over the past several years I have become an advocate for my mom, Selma, age 87, who’s battling Parkinson’s Disease, and travel to Dover every other month to help oversee her health care.   Doing so has given me the chance to reconnect with family and many Dover friends, and has turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.