Susan Rhoades; set up orphanage

Susan Harvey Rhoades, 63, of Malvern, a real estate agent and airline sales representative, who helped establish an orphanage in Brazil, died Feb. 1 of a sudden heart attack at Montgomery Hospital, Norristown.

For 25 years Mrs. Rhoades was a local sales representative for the Brazilian airline Varig. She traveled extensively on business in Brazil, always leaving home with big suitcases full of clothes for the street children who called her tia, or aunt. She found a U.S. sponsor for a boy who sold flowers and lived in a telephone booth, her family said, and in 1989 she cofounded an orphanage for special-needs children in Brazil, which operated for 10 years.

After Varig closed its U.S. office, Mrs. Rhoades became an agent for Weichert Real Estate and was a freelance writer. She also cohosted a radio series, The Business of Marketing, on WWDB-AM (860) with her father, Ed Harvey, a Philadelphia radio talk-show pioneer. Last year, when he became ill, she took over the series. He died in July.

Recently, she had been invited again to host the series in the spring, her family said. For the last five years, she had been a Democratic committeeperson in East Whiteland Township.

Mrs. Rhoades grew up on the Main Line. She graduated from Radnor High School, where she was prom queen her senior year, and attended Rider University in Lawrenceville and the University of Florence in Italy.

In 1971, she married Stephen Rhoades. They met at a party. He told her his astrological sign was Aquarius. Earlier that day, a fortune teller had predicted that she would meet her future husband that night and that he would be would be an Aquarius, their daughter Laura said.

Mrs. Rhoades was past president of the Main Line Unitarian Church, and she and her husband were active with the church youth group. They were weekend houseparents at the Milton Hershey School, a boarding school for disadvantaged children in Hershey. The couple would host formal dinner parties for the students to teach them proper etiquette, their daughter said.

Mrs. Rhoades traveled all over the world with her husband and with friends on trips she organized. She was a founding member of Wacky Women, a group of ladies of different ages and backgrounds who socialized regularly. She and members of the group had been working on a plan to help the victims of the Coatesville fires.

"She couldn't see a problem and not try to fix it," her husband said.

In addition to her husband and daughter, Mrs. Rhoades is survived by another daughter, Stephanie; a sister; and a brother.

A life celebration will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at Main Line Unitarian Church, 816 S. Valley Forge Rd., Devon.