Sue Joffray, who filled many roles at Loomis Chaffee, died on December 17, 2025. Sue and her husband, Don, spent 49 years living on campus, including in the Loomis Homestead for 29 years. Sue taught typing and dance and worked in the admissions and alumni offices from 1957 to 1990. She also was an assistant coach and goalie coach for the first varsity girls soccer team. Don was a math teacher and coach from 1950 to 1999.  

Sue was interviewed in the fall of 2024 for an article in the winter 2025 issue of Loomis Chaffee Magazine about storytellers. Sue told stories about her family’s time in the Homestead, a historic building that dates back to about 1640. What follows is an edited version of that article.

Oh, the stories she could tell. And the stories she does tell.

“I came from Southern California, you know,” Sue says when reached by phone at her Old Lyme home. “And I married this guy who had taught for two years at Loomis then went into the Navy, then we came back. So he said, ‘Well, we’ll go back for two years, then we’ll go to California for you.’ He was from New England. ... But I’m still here.” 

She laughs.

“But I will tell you one thing. If it weren’t for being at Loomis, which is so friendly — it’s like taking on a family, you know — if I had been living in some house on a street, I’m sure that would have been the end of that. But it was so warm and friendly.”

Sue and Don spent 14 years in dorms on campus before moving to the Homestead. “It was amazing living in the Homestead, I'll tell you that.”

Sue served as a cross between a museum guide and a school ambassador. She never knew when someone might knock on the door.  

“I will tell you one of my best stories,” Sue says. “I was over in the office in Founders looking out the window, and the secretary, Doris Brechtel, says to me, ‘Uh, oh, look at that [camper]. I bet they are here to see the Homestead.’ So she said, ‘I’ll head them off, and you run around the back.’ So I ran around the back and go inside and throw everything in a closet. I open the door and say, ‘Welcome,’ and this woman and her husband and another woman are there.”

She gives them a tour.

“And then he signs a book at the door, and when he signs he says, ‘Would you like to see my new [camper]?’ And the woman says, ‘She can’t see that. The beds aren’t made.’ And I say, ‘Yes, I can.’ So I went out. It was the only time I ever got back at someone.” 

She lets out another one of her laughs that punctuates the conversation, and all those memories. “I thought about traveling the country and saying, ‘Do you mind if I look in your cupboards, in your rooms?’ But living in the Homestead was a very wonderful thing.”

Even when it went beyond simply looking into the rooms.  

“They were going to have an exhibit at the Wadsworth [Atheneum in Hartford],” Sue says. “This man comes to the house to look through it. And then I see him, he’s upstairs in the bedroom and emptying drawers out of this wonderful chest. He said, “I think we will put this in the exhibit.’ So off went my chest to the Atheneum for a couple of months, but I was very proud that it was there.” 

Always proud, and always willing, to give tours.

“We would have students came through for tours so they could see what it was all about,” she says. “We always had Christmas parties there. We did a lot of things to make people feel at home in the Homestead because it is the seat of the school.”  

She also remembers various town groups coming in for tours. Much of the house had period furniture, dating back hundreds of years. 

She overheard someone saying, evidently quite appalled, “They have one of those bookcase headboards in a bedroom of that old house.” 

“I said, ‘Whoops,’” Sue recalls. “So the next time my husband was kayaking on the Farmington River — I’d take him way up by the Hitchcock factory, and he’d go down the river, and I’d pick him up. This day while he was kayaking, I was in the Hitchcock factory, and it cost him $450 to get down the river that time. We got a headboard. ... I tried to keep up with what things were supposed to look like.”

Even by phone, she provides a tour of the house, where she and Don raised three boys, Marshall ’75, who died in 1984; Rex ’76; and Jeff ’85.

“One of the ells was off toward Founders,” she says. “That was our piano room. And our son [Marshall] was a fabulous pianist. He was just so incredible; unfortunately, we lost him when he was 27. The music coming out of that room was wonderful, and it was the oldest part of the house, the old fireplace and everything about it. Just a wonderful room.”

When she talks about the upstairs, she recalls a closet. “Not just a walk-in. ... You could walk around in there.” Here comes another one of those laughs as the memory comes back. “All kinds of things got hidden in there.” And occasionally forgotten.

“We used to go to Maine for the summer,” she says, “so one year I hid the sterling silver in the closet. When it came to Thanksgiving, I could not find it.” Eventually her husband did when he pulled out a drawer. 

“So that’s a room,” she says, “I thought a ghost might have lived in. But I'm sure they were all around there.” 

Ghosts? 

“Oh yes, absolutely,” she says. “Absolutely, and I thought they were very welcoming. ... I felt that the hosts of the home were very pleased to have a family back in there. I was sure that they felt that way. It was a very warm, welcoming home.”