Susan Diane Kuchlak

Susan D. Kuchlak January 28, 1954 - September 25, 2016 Susan was born in Hartford City, Indiana to Phyllis A. Uggen and Richard L. Taylor (deceased) in 1954. She is survived by her husband, Jeff, her mother, Phyllis, brother, Steven L. Taylor (Maria Velinda Taylor) and sister, Nancy L. Taylor Gore (Barry J. Gore). Susan’s love for traveling and her appreciation for the natural beauty God created started at an early age. She lived in Indiana until she was six years of age, and then because of her father’s career advancements, the family relocated to Beaverton, Oregon. She loved living in the Pacific Northwest and hiking, camping and going to the dunes. After spending five years in Oregon, the family relocated to Oxnard, California. Susan loved going to the beach and all the fun stuff to do in Southern California. The family’s last major move was to Flemington, New Jersey . The location was a great historic area for her high school and college years and was within driving distance to visit Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and New York City. Susan graduated from Glassboro State College (Rowan University) in December 1975. Her first job was with Sperry Univac in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Susan was a software programmer and was working on a Conflict Alert program (in program language Jovial) to allow planes to identify when they were too close without giving the pilots false alerts. She loved watching the C5As doing touch-and-go’s. Jeff and Susan were married on November 20, 1976. To be closer to Jeff’s sales territory, Susan went from aviation work to power plant simulation (fossil and nuclear), working for Electronic Associates, Inc. (EAI) in Eatontown, New Jersey. It was a great experience for her to work on large scale integration platforms. While at EAI, they needed a software engineer to go to Arizona for six months to continue to download software loads and provide support to the nuclear operators, while they were training and evaluating the software. Susan and Jeff went everywhere they could over the weekends in Arizona before returning to New Jersey. As it turned out, six months expanded to two and a half years and they fell in love with Arizona and the Southwest. Susan was then hired by Hughes Helicopters, Inc. (HHI) in 1983. HHI was later bought out by McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems. In 1997, McDonnell Douglas and Boeing merged. Susan had thirty-three years of service with the company and loved working at Boeing. She took pride in the Boeing product line and wanted to make sure her Boeing teammates knew what a top notch and stellar team they were. They helped support tight schedules with heavy workloads and were always thinking how they could make improvements to help the warriors. Susan wanted to thank you for all your contributions and the wonderful friendships she made during her time at Boeing. She loved coming to work because of you. Her Midwest strong work ethic attributed to her success. However, her balance of work and family were not on an equal basis, until she received her cancer diagnosis in February 2014. It totally changed her priorities. Her best advice to all would be to always make family a top priority. Susan doesn’t want anyone to be sad. She lived a wonderful life and was so blessed with support from her family and dear friends. Susan’s Celebration of Life will be held on Friday, October 21, 2016 from 3 - 5 p.m. at The Falls Event Center, 4635 East Baseline Road, Gilbert, AZ 85234. In lieu of flowers, Susan requested donations be made in her name to the following: Arizona Humane Society (www.azhumane.org) Hospice of the Valley (www.hov.org/donate).