Susan (Berrett) Wilcox

After returning home from the semester abroad in 1972, I graduated from Orem High School in 1973 and returned to the Holy Land on a short 2 week tour with my Dad, in 1974. While there, we paid a visit to the City Hotel to visit with the current semester abroad students. They were away in Tiberias at the time, but the hotel clerk told Dad that two Mormon missionaries were staying there for a few nights, so Dad called their room and had them come down to meet us. They were Mark Wilcox and his companion, Rick Ward, who were traveling and sightseeing on their way home from serving their missions in Beirut, Lebanon. They joined our bus tour for a couple of days…who would have thought I would meet my future husband at the City Hotel in Jerusalem! We were married in 1976.

Upon graduation from BYU in 1977, we moved to New York City, where Mark began his work in the advertising world. We had two small children in tow: Jameela and Tyler. (The name “Jameela” has Arabic influence and means “beautiful”) We lived back East, mostly in Westchester County for ten wonderful and exciting years, where our third child, Lindsey was born. In 1987, a new employment opportunity brought us west to San Diego. We have been in San Diego for 20 years now and love it here, where we are closer to our families and our great love, the ocean!

Currently, Mark works at a local television station as Local and National Sales Manager. I am a Sales Process and Marketing consultant which sends me traveling quite a bit…I guess it’s in the Berrett blood! Our Jameela and her husband, John Howell, artist and commercial real estate developer, reside in Austin, Texas and have 3 beautiful girls. Tyler attended Ohio State University Law School and is an Assistant District Attorney for the city of Columbus. He and his wife, Holly, have two children, a boy and a girl, making 5 grandchildren! We are thrilled at being grandparents…what a joy. Lindsey and her husband, Robb Costello are newly married and have located near Newark, New Jersey, where he is teaching school in the Teach for America program while getting his Masters at Seton Hall. Lindsey will start a Masters program at Rutgers in May. Connor is 17, a junior in High School and a stand out on the Varsity basketball team at Canyon Crest Academy, here in San Diego.


Memories from our Israel semester Abroad

Most scary – Spending the night in the St. Catherine’s Monastery at the base of Mt.Sinai

Most eerie – the tanks out in the desert left from the war…some with human remains in them

Most sacred – Personal time spent in the Garden Tomb compound

Most awesome – The pyramids of Egypt, Petra (Cheri Humphries standing on her hands on the edge of one of the structures! Yikes!) and Masada

Most amazing today – a picture of me standing in the remains of Abrahams’ house in Iraq and finding a gold coin while during the archeology dig at the temple site in Jerusalem. Amazing!

Most nostalgic – Hearing the song “American Pie” (thanks, Mike Meservy!) or “Jerusalem of Gold”

Most amazing – That my parents saw the value of splitting our family apart and making the sacrifice to take the four of us older children to Israel, so that we could have such a life changing experience

Most lasting – Friendships made while sitting interlocking knees on the trukbuses and all sorts of “together times” with everyone…especially with my siblings and my dad, LaMar

Most memorable – the many places we visited where you could never get into today…it’s a long list!

Most enlightening at the time – Seeing my Dad outside of our home “in his element” with a bunch of kids that he LOVED and in places that he KNEW and LOVED SO well! I learned to appreciate a new side of him that I never would have known.

Something that makes me smile – “Hubba Hubba you kids