Susan Stark Wilz

A funeral will be held on Saturday March 4th at 11:00am in Saint Charles Catholic Church, Bloomington, Indiana. Interment will be at Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington next to her husband, John and their infant daughter, Barbara. Friends may visit at Day & Deremiah-Frye Funeral Home at 4150 E. 3rd Street in Bloomington on March 3rd from 4:00 to 7:00pm In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Beacon Solutions for People in Poverty at beaconinc.org

Susan was born April 13, 1933 in Louisville, Kentucky to Louis Paul and Margaret Eulalia (Wycoff) Stark, entering the world with an identical twin sister, Ellen. She, Ellen and their younger brother, Louis, were raised on Bonniecastle Avenue in Louisville, Kentucky. She married John Edward Wilz of Washington, Indiana, in 1955, who predeceased her in September of 1994.

Susan graduated high school from Sacred Heart Academy in Louisville, Kentucky in 1951, attended Ursuline college briefly until transferring to the University of Kentucky. The twins both received a Kellogg scholarship to study Bacteriology and Medical Technology at UK, where they graduated in 1955.

Susan and John raised eight children. A ninth child, Barbara, died shortly after birth in 1968. When the youngest, Jim, was born, Susan went to work at Bloomington Hospital in the laboratory as a medical technologist until her retirement in 1990.

During the upbringing of their children, Susan and the family went to Jamaica in the mid-1960s, to West Germany in 1970, and Austria in 1979 under Fulbright scholarships sponsored by Indiana University. In 1990, Susan and John visited South Korea for the 40-year commemoration of the Korean War.

Susan enjoyed travel, regularly played bridge with friends from the Bloomington community, and was an avid reader. Some notable accomplishments include the following: as a concerned citizen, she advocated for a city law to ensure that any bodies of water, such as pools or ponds, had fencing put around them to protect children from drowning; she served as John’s caregiver for many of the last years of his life; and she oversaw and edited the publication of an extensive family history. One of her and John’s proudest accomplishments, however, was to provide for the higher education of their children.

Surviving are seven children: Margaret Ellen Bunke, San Diego, California; Dr. John F. Wiltz, Point Pleasant, West Virginia; Mary Zabriskie, Indianapolis, Indiana; Catherine Patterson, Woodbridge, Virginia; Jennie Sobecki, Fishers, Indiana; Stark Wilz, New York City, and Dr. James Wiltz, Bloomington, Indiana. Son Paul Wiltz died in 2017 (age 53) and daughter, Barbara, died in 1968 (age 1 day). Susan has 14 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

Preceding her in death are Susan’s parents when she was 26 years old, Louis Paul Stark in 1959 (age 51), and Margaret Eulalia (Wycoff) Stark in 1958 (age 48); her younger brother, Louis Paul Stark, died in 2002 (age 61) and her twin sister, Ellen Moreland (Stark) Kemker, died in 2012 (age 79).

Susan was a sweet person who will be missed by all who knew her.