Suzanne Justice Carr

Suzanne Justice Carr, 87, died on April 30th, 2021, at the Fountainview Center for Alzheimer’s Disease in Atlanta, Georgia. Born in Portsmouth, Ohio, on September 29, 1933, she was the daughter of school teacher Etta Mae Hunter and grocer Charlie Justice. She is survived by her husband, Timothy Carr, sons Christopher Carr and John Smiley, grandchildren Hunter Smiley and Sara Smiley Kent, and great-grandchildren Riley Suzanne Kent and Charlie Parker Kent. She was pre-deceased by her brother, Richard Justice, a founder of Nasdaq.

After graduating as salutatorian from Portsmouth High School in 1950, she was recruited by Radcliffe College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she majored in music and polished her skills as a classical pianist. While in Cambridge, she married John Russell Smiley, and had a son, John. After graduating from Radcliffe in 1955, she got a divorce, moved to Florida, and started a career as music teacher and choir director in high schools in St. Petersburg and Safety Harbor. Her involvement in the personal lives of her students led to an interest in psychology. She enrolled at the University of Florida, and in 1965 graduated with an M.Ed degree in Guidance and Counseling.

In 1967 she met and married Timothy Carr. With her son John, the three of them moved to Atlanta, where she pursued a doctorate in psychology, first at Emory University and then at Georgia State University. In 1973 she got her Ph.D in Social/Developmental Psychology, and began teaching college-level psychology in Atlanta, first at Clark College and then at Spelman College. In 1981 she returned to Georgia State University to certify as a clinical psychologist. After internships at the VA hospital and the Emory Center for Rehabilitative Medicine, she got her Georgia license, and began private practice, first in Lawrenceville and later in Decatur. Her focus was on older women and their transition through midlife. She wrote a book on the topic, The New Third Act.

Her most prized possession was her 1889 Steinway grand piano, on which she played Mozart, Chopin, Bach, Schubert, and other classical and romantic composers. She held frequent musicales featuring recitals on all kinds of instruments by music-lovers ranging from beginners to members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

She retired from her practice in 2018, and in 2020 moved into assisted living and thence into Fountainview. Cremation by the Cremation Society of Georgia. Contributions to the Alzheimer’s Association would be welcomed, and most appropriate.