Susan Sohlberg Ross

Susan Sohlberg Ross 91, of Greensboro, NC passed away on Saturday, August 15, 2026. Sue was born in 1935 in McPherson, Kansas, to Robert Sohlberg Jr. and Virginia Bliss Gortner. She grew up primarily in McPherson, with several childhood years in San Antonio while her father served as an Army physician during World War II. She graduated from the University of Kansas in 1956 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Microbiology and worked briefly as a laboratory technician in Kansas City.

At Kansas, she met James Adair Ross of Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Sue apparently noticed Jim before he noticed her, requiring a little help from friends before he caught on. They married in 1957 and shared 58 years of a deeply loving marriage until his death in 2015. Their life together took them from Berkeley, California, to Columbia, Missouri, and finally to Jamestown, North Carolina, in 1973. In Jim’s later years, Sue cared for him with extraordinary devotion as Parkinson’s disease gradually took its toll.

Sue was a wonderful homemaker, exceptional cook and baker, and remarkably talented lifelong knitter. Her kitchen produced everything from chicken and dumplings and homemade dinner rolls to oatmeal cookies, strawberry shortcake and the legendary family recipe for Mrs. Moody’s Wonder Cake. She passed recipes and skills to her children and grandchildren. Her knitting produced elaborate sweaters, Christmas stockings for every grandchild, baby hats and gifts for family, friends and church.

Sue and Jim raised their family in the Presbyterian Church, and she was a longtime member of Jamestown Presbyterian Church, where over the years she baked communion bread, knitted for others, created Advent banners and contributed to church life in countless other ways.

Sue and Jim loved to travel. Two young kids from flat Kansas and flat Oklahoma honeymooned in Estes Park, Colorado, fell in love with the mountains and spent much of the next half-century exploring. Their travels eventually took them to national parks throughout the United States and Canada and around the world, including Belize, France, Italy, Switzerland, Scotland, the Galápagos Islands, Tahiti and Kenya. They loved the food, culture, wildlife and scenery and returned with photographs that became elaborate family slide shows. Closer to home, annual trips to North Carolina’s Outer Banks became one of the family’s most treasured traditions. Beginning with trips to Nags Head in the early 1970s, Sue and Jim returned to the beach nearly every year for decades, first with their children and later with their children’s families. Generations grew up together on those trips. Sue and Jim loved to walk the beach hand in-hand.

Sue was also famously tough. After badly breaking an ankle while hiking on a glacier in the 1990s, she made her way approximately five miles downhill before reaching a place from which she could be rescued. A physician later called her a “tough old bird,” an assessment her family considers well supported by the evidence.

She loved good food without being particularly concerned about whether it was fancy. She could appreciate a memorable restaurant in Europe and be equally happy with a Cook Out hamburger, barbecue, Tex-Mex or a dive oyster bar. She loved college basketball, especially her Kansas Jayhawks—and knew enough about the players, coaches and backstories that family members learned to take her NCAA tournament bracket seriously. She also loved Bobby Cox/TBS /Skip Caray era of the Atlanta Braves.

She also loved books and laughter and passed both loves along to her family. Donald Westlake, Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard and Dave Barry were among her favorites. After oral surgery in the 1970s, she once laughed so hard while reading Westlake’s Dancing Aztecs that she tore her stitches. She loved Peanuts, newspaper comics, clever puns and the absurdities of everyday life, and she could receive family teasing every bit as well as she delivered it. Her friendships were deep and enduring. Dinner groups, wine-tasting friends and especially bridge clubs created communities in which Sue and her friends watched one another’s families grow for more than 50 years. She was often the glue that held those groups together. She played bridge with friends just nine days before her death.

Above everything else, Sue loved her family fiercely and took enormous pride in her children and grandchildren. She is survived by her daughter, Virginia “Ginny” Ross Furth and husband Chris; her son, Robert Adair “Bob” Ross and wife Dixie; grandchildren Andrew Furth and wife Sara, Evan Furth and wife Roux, Rachel Ross and fiancé Pete Schultz, Abigail Ross and Benjamin Ross; and great-grandson, Oliver James Furth.

She paid attention to the people she loved. She entered into their interests, made their favorite foods, taught them things, traveled with them, followed their lives and teased them when circumstances warranted.

She was deeply loved, and she knew it.

There will be a Celebration of Life in the Theatre at Carolina Pines on Saturday, September 26, 2026, at 2:00 p.m., followed by wine and light snacks in the Pub. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Jamestown Presbyterian Church, 1804 Guilford College Road, Jamestown, NC 27282, or to the HKC Foundation for Parkinson’s (Hamil-Kerr Challenge), PO Box 1963, Jamestown, NC 27282, in memory of Susan Sohlberg Ross.

Hanes-Lineberry Sedgefield Chapel is honored to serve the Ross family.