Sue was born in a southwestern Virginia town. It was a coal-mining town on a road extending from the county road in to the colliery at the foot of the mountain. At twelve years of age, her family moved to Athens, Tennessee, and subsequently to Chattanooga, where she later attended the University of Tennessee. She then married and had two daughters. She lost her husband to cancer when her daughters were sixteen and seventeen years old. She then obtained an education in nursing and subsequently moved to Lakeland, Florida, to attend to her aging mother. She now resides with her second husband in Richmond, Virginia.
