Sucher, Dorothy

Dorothy Sucher was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Brooklyn College, receiving a B. A. in English in 1954, and continued her studies at Columbia University from 1955 through 1956. She received an M. M. H. (Master of Mental Health) from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1975. Sucher worked as a psychotherapist from 1975 through 1985 and was very active in the women's movement in Maryland in the 1970s. She established and led the Consciousness Raising Program of the Northern Prince George's County Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) from 1977 to 1980. In 1978 she became NOW's Maryland Consciousness Raising Coordinator and expanded the program to other counties in the state. She led consciousness raising (CR) groups, trained CR leaders, and developed a packet of readings for CR leaders that was used throughout the Mid-Atlantic region of NOW. She and her husband, Joseph Sucher, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, whom she married in 1952, served jointly as delegates to the NOW State Council for several years.

A mystery writer, Sucher served four years in the late 1980s as treasurer of Sisters in Crime, an international organization formed to gain recognition for women mystery writers. She also founded the group's Mid-Atlantic chapter. Sucher taught creative writing at Georgetown University, Duke University, and the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Her published works include the mystery novels Dead Men Don't Give Seminars and Dead Men Don't Marry and a book of personal essays entitled The Invisible Garden .

From 1957 to 2001, Sucher lived in Greenbelt, Maryland, where she raised four children and was active in many community organizations. She was the "founding mother" of the Greenbelt Writers Group and spearheaded the formation of the Greenbelt Museum. She also served as editor, reporter, and columnist for the Greenbelt News Review for 50 years.

In 1984, she and her husband began spending six months each year in Cabot, Vermont, where she renovated an old farmhouse and created the garden described in her book, The Invisible Garden . At the age of seventy, she returned to an early love, art, which she had studied in her youth, becoming an accomplished watercolorist who exhibited and sold her landscapes and flower paintings. Dorothy Sucher continues to spend the remaining half of the year in College Park, Maryland.

From the guide to the Dorothy Sucher Collection, 1970-1981, 1977-1979, (State of Maryland and Historical Collections)