Susie's Poetry

"Grandma" was a poet, penning a unique collection of rhyming prose and other entertaining thoughts, captured in "Poems by Mrs. Susie Brooks Overton"

Grandpa (James A. Overton, Sr.) and Grandma (Susannah “Susie” Brooks Overton) in front of their home in Sanford NC in the late 1960s.

---

She was a poet, and we didn’t know it

Memories of my grandma, Susannah “Susie” Brooks Overton, include her seclusion, by desire, in the kitchen of her North Vance Street home in Sanford NC, regularly cooking soups, casseroles, vegetables and desserts. As far as she was concerned, eating—having food ready for visitors—was more than a three times a day effort.

Grandma loved to visit with relatives, especially wanting her grandchildren to populate her home. Interestingly though, she usually turned over the “look after the grandchildren” duties to Grandpa while she toiled in but enjoyed the kitchen. I can’t quite remember a time she set down her kitchen utensils and sat to talked with visitors, family or not. Her kitchen was her castle.

Little did I know, until her passing in 1984, that she was pretty darn good poet, penning hundreds of poems, usually the every other phrase rhyming kind. Some of the poems she titled; others not so much, just prose that popped into her mind at the right time. For instance:

• In the restless days of winter’s ebb,

• Ere the tide of Spring comes in,

• The spirit of man is torn and sad

• And trouble blows with the wind.

• Tis a waiting time; and the tide is slow

• That brings new life again.

• The old grow tired and many go

• Ere the coming of the Spring.

• A time when storms come out of the east

• And birds go back to their nests;

• The wailing wind seems never to cease,

• And the last dead leaves fall to rest.

• It’s the time when we think of the ports we’ve missed

• All along our journey’s way,

• And learn that skies by rainbows kissed

• Are never come to stay.

• It’s a time to man each ship anew,

• To set the sails to the breeze,

• To know when the tide is full again

• We shall sail well-chartered seas.

  —Susie Brooks Overton

Susie Brooks was born November 23, 1891 in what was then part of Moore County. She was one of six children to William Isaac Brooks and Susannah Hunt. (NOTE: Today the Isaac Brooks Highway—part of US 421 in North Carolina—runs north and south through Chatham County between the counties of Randolph and Lee.)

Educated at Elon College, Grandma married James Atkins Overton, and they had five children, the first of which was Annie Laurie Overton who, after being educated at Meredith College in Raleigh and stationed in England and serving in Europe with the Red Cross during World War II, she married Robert E. Pomeranz of Far Rockaway NY who had moved to Sanford after graduation from NC State College.

Bob and Annie Laurie had six children. I’m (James Benson Pomeranz) number three, and the middle child because the final two of the six were twins. Dad was born May 30, 1917 and died June 7, 1997; Mom, born January 30, 1918, passed on August 7, 2007.

Through Mom’s mother, Susie Brooks Overton, our decedent family of the Brooks clan traces back to the late 1500s with John Brooks among the names among those left behind at Roanoke Colony, today known as the Lost Colony. Claiming that as the beginning of the Brooks family in the United States, I’ve figured I’m 12th or 13th generation American on my mother’s-mother’s side. But, because my Dad was born in the United States of immigrant parents, I am but second generation on my Dad’s side. Interesting.

For those who know me, I have a unique connection to and fondness of North Carolina State University. Dad attended there, 1939-43, earning his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering. As a student, he was very active in all things NC State College, especially writing for the Technician, the student newspaper where he served as Sports Editor.

I attended NC State, 1970-77, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and was the Sports Editor of the Technician spring of 1974 through spring of 1975. I’ve also had siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins, and others of unnamed relative-titles go to NC State.

However, my connection to NC State goes back to the 1920s when Eugene Clyde Brooks served as President, 1923-24. His name doesn’t appear in a historical source about my lineage of the Brooks family, but since he was born in Greene County, there’s a good possibility we are related. More research is underway as I write this. For more on Eugene Clyde Brooks, click here. He was quite a person, another reason to claim his relation to the Brooks clan.

Now, back to Grandma (Susie Brooks) and her poetry. I’m taking a short break from sports—I sure am happy about Rory McIlroy and his Master’s championship and that the Wolfpack has a new men’s basketball coach—and politics—the Republican members, except one, of the North Carolina Supreme Court are died in the wool followers of all things Republican politics with their recent ruling about the race for a seat at the NC Supreme Court table; they should be ashamed—and the financial side of college athletics—please do not ask me for more cash to fund absurd name, image, and likeness contracts and overpay coaches, but I still expect the football and men’s basketball programs to win at high levels, but when they don’t I reserve the right to be critical—and my desire to improve the self-made walking paths at Lonnie Poole Golf Course, a continuing story for another time.

I’m going to treat—yes, it’ll be a treat—you to Grandma’s poetry. In the book, Brooks and Kindred Families, compiled and written by Mary Ida Brooks Kellam, sister of Susie Brooks, and published in 1950, here is the Eulogium:

• God give us vision frought with strength

• To rise above the level of our day.

• Oh, let me scorn the mean, the common-place,

• And build my bark of life as firm as they

• Have built with fewer tools and crude,

• To smoothe and turn and weld the rugged beam.

• Oh, let the craft I weave be strong as theirs,

• To help some other down life’s roughest stream.

  —Susannah Brooks Overton, 1931

NOTE: Spell Check says “frought” should be “fraught” and “smoothe” should be “smooth” but who am I to change what Grandma wrote?

So, enjoy her poetry, and, if you see fit, pass it along to others who aspire to be self-made poets:

• There once was a grandma named Susie

• Who really was quite a doozy.

• She sat at her desk

• And penned maybe the best

• Poems that included words to her choosy.

—Grandson Jim, 2025