Being a chambermaid to English royalty isn’t the obvious route to journalism, but it worked for Susie Quick.
Quick, who was 84 when she died Oct. 6, was hired as one of several chambermaids to the late Queen Mother Elizabeth and the late King George VI, when they made a train trip through South Africa in 1947.
Quick was about the same age (21) as the current queen, Elizabeth II, was at the time. Quick wrote about the trip and got a job with the Cape Times in Cape Town.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday at her home.
Quick, a native of Oudtshoorn, South Africa, became a music and art critic at the paper, but after a while decided she’d like to be a travel writer, so she booked passage on a cargo ship to Japan in 1959.
While still single, she went there to do stories, knowing enough of the language “to at least order a meal,” said her son, Jim Quick of Niwot.
She wired her stories back to the Johannesburg Star, where she got a job as a travel writer.
It was on a trip to South America that she met Horace Quick of New Jersey. They married on Dec. 23, 1961.
They settled in Boulder.
She continued to write articles for South African magazines about life in the United States. She published two books in Afrikaans. The translations of the book titles are “The Cowboys and Me” and “The Yanks and Me.”
She also wrote an American cookbook for South Africans.
“She forever remained loyal to South Africa,” said her daughter, Josie Quick of Denver.
Susie Quick loved to cook and entertain, sometimes serving exotic foods, and had “an encyclopedic knowledge of music and literature,” Josie Quick said.
Quick was always blunt, such as the time a houseguest made breakfast and Quick said, “This looks like something the dog threw up.”
Her husband had just as strong a personality.
“Our house was like a sitcom,” said Josie Quick, laughing. “I think our parents loved arguing.”
Longtime friend Romaine Ausman of Carefree, Ariz., went to classical music festivals every year with Quick.
“She could tell you off, and she swore, but always with dignity and grace,” Ausman said.
Quick “made the shirts for all of us when I was growing up,” Jim Quick said. “It wasn’t a ‘Little House on the Prairie’ thing,” he said. “She just liked to sew.”
If one of the kids got in trouble with her, “we didn’t have the luxury of being sent to our rooms,” Jim Quick said. “She sentenced us to labor,” giving the kid a rake or shovel and sending him or her to the yard.
Susie McDermid was born in South Africa on Dec. 19, 1926, and had intended to teach school there, said her daughter.
“Mercifully, she decided not to teach,” Josie Quick said. “She was too impatient and spoke her mind.”
Horace Quick, who taught at the University of Colorado, died in 2004.
In addition to her son and daughter, Susie Quick is survived by a stepson, Bronco Quick of Orono, Maine.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
