Honoring Susan Carroll's Legacy for Her Sons

We, friends and family, are devastated that Susan Carroll, devoted mom to Ollie and Owen, whom she adored until the ends of the universe and back, died suddenly last weekend. We are sharing this GoFundMe to help the boys with their college funds.

To know Susy, most recently a senior editor at NBC News Digital, was a gift. She was a lyrical writer, dogged reporter, graceful editor, wonderful mother, and loyal friend with a huge, easy laugh.

She loved to play pranks on colleagues, showering them with love and attention on their birthdays or other occasions of note. She was a passionate journalist but more than anything, a devoted mother who once wrote a children's book complete with illustrations in honor of a friend's childhood memory.

Susy dreamed big, laughed hard and tried to change the world for Ollie and Owen – as much as she cared about all the other children in the world who were not as fortunate. Such passion included her reporting in Guatemala about migrant children fleeing harm to come to the United States.

She loved tales as big as Texas and was passionate about holding the state to account.

At NBC she wrote a series of stories, later picked up by the New York Times, about a cattle rustling sting in Loving County, Texas, (population 51) that fit the classic newspaper definition of “readers," meaning they were widely consumed. As an editor at NBC, she guided ambitious reporting projects on the Maui wildfires, the fights over LGBTQ inclusion in schools, and — in collaboration with ProPublica — abuses of America’s child welfare system .

During her time at ProPublica, in 2021, Susy edited projects about Louisiana sheriff's departments, over-policing of schools in the Antelope Valley, north of Los Angeles, and homelessness in San Francisco. She was a gracious colleague and collaborator, a supportive coach for reporters, and brought a lot of energy to ProPublica's Local Reporting Network.

Susy was not only remarkably gifted at writing, but hard-nosed at investigations, particularly when they involved government failures. As senior editor for investigations at the Houston Chronicle, she guided a team of nearly a dozen reporters to investigate Texas’ failure to adequately prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic. As a reporter, she was the first in the nation to deeply investigate the abuses of unaccompanied immigrant children in federal detention. She also examined the missed warnings about Hurricane Harvey and the mismanagement of Texas' $44 billion public school endowment. She exposed the risks and frequency of children struck by vehicles traveling in reverse at low speeds that hastened federal law changes requiring backup cameras in cars and trucks.

Her work at the Houston Chronicle resulted in other changes to state law and federal policy, as well as congressional inquiries. Before joining the Chronicle, Susy was a reporter at the Arizona Republic, where she covered the U.S.-Mexico border for many years.

She won dozens of journalism awards, including leading a team at the Chronicle to a Pulitzer Prize-finalist nomination for its coverage of Hurricane Harvey. Her oversight and daily write-throughs of coverage during the storm captured the enormity of the devastation and the massive relief efforts begun before the rains ceased. She led an early investigation into problems at a chemical plant ill-prepared for the storm that later led to one of the largest civil lawsuits related to Harvey.

Her work has also received top honors from the National Press Foundation and Investigative Reporters and Editors, as well as a National Headliner Award.

Her biggest reward, however, was her two sons, both straight-A students. When she was not chasing a story or running down public records requests, you could find Susy most weekends cheering from the stands at her boys' baseball games or soccer matches.

Like their mom, they are kind, caring and generous kids filled with love for their family and wonder at the world.

We hope to honor her memory, and significant contribution to democracy as well as humanity, with a college fund for her two boys.

A memorial service is set for 10:30 a.m. Thursday, June 6, at St. Stephen's United Methodist Church, 2003 W 43rd Street, Houston. Visit the church's YouTube site for a livestream of the service. A gathering to celebrate Susy will take place beginning at 2 p.m. Thursday at NettBar Shady Acres, 1717 W. 22nd Street, Houston.

To contribute to a book of memories about Susy, contact Lomi Kriel on this page.