Marylene Suess

Marylene Suess, 83, passed away Tuesday, October 17, 2017 at Phoebe Putney Hospital. A private family service was held Friday, October 20, 2017 at Crown Hill Cemetery. Affectionately known to her family as “Baby Zola,” she was born to the late Florence and Charley Walls in Hawkinsville, GA and was raised during the depression on a farm in Hazlehurst, GA. Times were hard and money tight and they survived by sharecropping and turpentine collection. Marylene never forgot her roots and often wrote short stories for her family and friends depicting characters she had grown up with and the rural life she had lived. She graduated from Jeff Davis High School and moved to Sanford, FL to seek employment where she met Lambert Suess who was stationed on base awaiting deployment to Korea and who later became her husband of sixty years. Marylene often referred to Lambert as “her little navy man” and she as his “Georgia Peach.” Marylene and Lambert moved to Albany in 1958 where they formed Lambert Suess Construction with the encouragement and help of their dear late friend Murray Webb. She served as the bookkeeper (and Lambert would say his boss.) She and Lambert built over 600 homes in Albany, Leesburg, Dawson and surrounding counties during their fifty-plus years in business and continued to work with their sons until she was in her 70’s. She never considered her work a job and most of their clients became their friends, building additional homes for them and their children over the years. She later attended Darton College where she received her Real Estate License and became a salesperson for Tift and Westbrook and Walden and Kirkland. In their later years, Marylene loved going to their farms where they fished, farmed, hunted, rode and worked on tractors, planted and cut down trees, combined with some serious goofing off. She was a member of St. Teresa's Catholic Church and one of her greatest joys was helping others by visiting and assisting friends and people she did not even know in area nursing facilities. She was proceeded in death by her parents, her husband, Lambert, a brother and a sister. Her daughter, Diane Kelly died October 23, 2017. She is survived by her two sons, Greg Suess (Tammie), Gerald Suess, two grandchildren, Kristen Stevens (Trent), David Kelly (Ann), sister, Mary Orvin, brothers, Henry Walls (Joyce), Billy Walls, and Donny Walls. The family would like to thank her amazing nurses David Ellis, Gerri, and Karen, her doctors, Dr. Daniel Anderson and Dr. Ayodeji Olarewaj in MICCU at Phoebe Putney for their dedication and compassion. Those desiring may make a donation to St. Teresa’s school fund in memory of Marylene Suess to St. Teresa’s Catholic Church, 421 Edgewood Lane, Albany, GA 31707.