As the researcher for GLA, I owe everything to Susie Kibler Morris and her enthusiasm to share the story of the Kibler family as she was “the last leaf on the vine” as she told me in our first interview in 2013. In her early 90’s at the time, she was still very mentally sharp and very generous with knowledge of not only her parents, but various friends of theirs also in the Abbey and information about parts of Columbus that she lived in. We never met physically, but through phone conversations, emails, and greeting cards I considered her something of a surrogate grandmother to me. Although I’d likely have gotten to the information eventually on my own, she gave me one heck of a head start and a template of how I’d go about researching in the future.
