Early Life and Education

Susan (“Susy”) Borden Hyde was born in Santa Barbara, California. Her mother Dorothy died six days after Susy’s birth; Robert married Lydia Lawrence Tonetti (1904-1943) the next year.

Susan grew up largely in Snedens Landing, New York, with her father, stepmother Lydia, and three siblings. Summers were spent on Martha’s Vineyard at a summer camp that her father built in 1931 on Lake Tashmoo. One winter the family lived in Vineyard Haven, across from Owen Park, where Susy attended Tisbury Elementary School.

At fourteen she returned to Santa Barbara to live with her father, who had remarried Florence “Floppy” Tuckerman Andrews. There, school officials discovered that her unconventional father had advanced her a grade, but they could not dispute her performance when she graduated just after her seventeenth birthday.

Courtship and Marriage

Susy maintained her ties to Snedens Landing and Martha’s Vineyard. At sixteen, while spending the summer at Tashmoo, she met Eliot “Bud” Macy, whose family had a summer camp across the lake. The two fell in love and were married on July 4, 1942, in a memorable outdoor ceremony beside the Hudson River in Snedens Landing. The bride and bridesmaids arrived by catboat, and the ceremony was performed by Bud’s father, a Congregational minister, on July 4, 1942, in a riverbank ceremony under Mary Lawrence Tonetti’s stone pergola.

Life During and After World War II

Bud was a conscientious objector during World War II and performed alternative service, while Susy briefly supported the war effort working for a defense contractor. She pursued higher education near Bud’s postings, attending classes while he worked in forestry in New York and later in a mental hospital in New Hampshire. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Boston University in 1945.

After the war, the couple moved to Santa Barbara but soon returned east, where Bud pursued graduate studies at Yale Divinity School and volunteered with the American Friends Service Committee. During Bud’s assignment in Finland, Susy—pregnant with their second child—purchased a small house in New Haven on her own initiative.

By 1948 the family had resettled in Santa Barbara. In 1949, with three young children, they traveled to Europe, spending a winter with Danish friends before returning on the Swedish liner Stockholm.

Community and Professional Life

Back in Santa Barbara, Susy became active in the PTA and as a Brownie leader. In the 1960s she turned to education professionally, first as a volunteer, then as an instructional aide, and finally as a trained school psychologist. She earned an M.Ed. in Counseling and Guidance at UCSB in 1971 and additional credentials in psychometry, school psychology, and community college instruction.

In 1974 she became the first School Psychologist for the Martha’s Vineyard Regional School System, where she and Bud had summered for years. She continued in that role until her retirement in 1993, though she remained active as a consultant through 2000.

Beliefs and Legacy

Susy was committed to educational reform and community service, serving on early childhood and preschool committees for Martha’s Vineyard schools. Though not formally active in the feminist movement, she was an ardent believer in gender equality and frequently expressed disappointment at the historical silencing of women’s voices.

She and Bud enjoyed nearly sixty–nine years of marriage. After his death in 2011, she divided her time between the Vineyard and the homes of her children in New York. She died in 2016, remembered for her intelligence, independence, commitment to education, and deep devotion to her family.