Cruising west on Interstate 30, about half an hour from Little Rock, you come to Susie Everett's signature stretch of road. On both sides of the highway sit the Everett auto dealerships, each with oversized video screens flashing images and messages to passing motorists. As the face of the longtime family company, Everett's familiar image grins as her words wave to the traffic, sending season's greetings, congratulating local high school teams or just wishing everyone a good day.

If you didn't know it before, you quickly understand: This is Benton and Benton is Susie's town. Here, she grew up and attended school, from sixth grade on. Here, she met and married the love of her life with whom she'd build a business and raise a family. Here, she formed the faith that saved her and that today fuels her efforts to serve the many others who are seeking personal miracles.

"One of my biggest compliments, and I don't get it all the time or anything like that, but somebody will say, 'I can see the love of Christ shining through you,'" she says. "For them to say it means that they saw something that I don't always see in myself. When they feel Christ, that's what's going to give them the hope for their future. That's exactly what I would like to be reflected through me."

Everett's reflection of this grace takes many forms. Sometimes it's a concentrated beam, as with heart-borne projects like co-creating Benton's Christian Community Care Clinic or providing mentorship and hope through the nonprofit Women Equipped, Christian Women's Job Corps. Other times, as with her service on the board of trustees for Ouachita Baptist University or interacting with customers and employees, it's a disco ball, broadcasting droplets of light to many people at once.

And in the darkest hours of her life, wracked by cancer and hammered by chemo, the light pulsed within her like a brazier in the hearth, refusing to yield to the cold and darkness.

"The thing about it is, the business and the notoriety it has given her, it's a platform," says Dwight Everett, her husband of 44 years come New Year's Eve. "And how she uses that platform has opened doors for people. She can get in front of different groups and walk her faith and it's inspiring. And when the rubber hits the road and you need good, sound direction and good advice, she does a really good job of that as well."

SWEET TEA AND HAM SANDWICHES

Originally, the plan was to be a flight attendant, or stewardess as they called them in the 1970s when Everett attended Benton High School, strutted with the drill team among other school clubs, and generally brought the fun wherever she went. Even crossing paths with Dwight, whom she first dated for the summer after her senior year before he returned to Henderson State University and she to Ouachita Baptist University, didn't foretell anything permanent. He was just someone to spend time with during the prelude to big adventures in a big world.

"I thought it would be fun to have somebody to date that summer. I didn't know it was going to turn into 43 years or so," she says with a shrug. "My mom, I think, was hooked on him more than me that summer. She had sweet tea and ham sandwiches for him. All. The. Time."

While attending OBU, things began to change. While still the bright light in any room, Everett began to pay more attention to the faith her parents planted in her, nurturing it into full bloom with summer mission trips and changing her career goals to something more grounded and meaningful than pushing a beverage cart. She studied in OBU's pre-nursing program, then transferred to what is now UAMS College of Nursing in Little Rock.

By that time, she'd also become more serious about her relationship with Dwight, and after four years of on-again, off-again courtship, the two were married over semester break.

"The way he loved me was a big deal to me," she remembers. "I'm not all smiles and a great person all the time. I'm pretty stubborn and have my own ways."

Everett earned her nurse practitioner degree and her title of mother in close proximity, leading her to a string of health care roles that eventually led her back home. There, she worked at Saline Memorial Hospital, in home health care and as a school nurse. With every assignment she took and every patient she faced, she felt the commingling of her faith and her profession.

"I wanted to do something where I could help people and at the same time, share Christ, too. And nursing seemed to be a good fit," she says. "When I went on summer mission trips in college, I enjoyed the focus of it, but realized I didn't know as much as I thought I did about dealing with people.

"That's what nursing taught me; treating a person the way you would like to be treated or treating a family the way you would want yours treated gives the overall sense that everybody's important. I believed that then and I still believe that today."

In 1997, Everett's whole life balanced and turned on a spot no larger than the tip of her fingernail. The tiny, early-stage lump she detected was confirmed as cancer, followed by a lumpectomy and six weeks of radiation treatments. From these, she rebounded well and as a longtime fitness nut with a mile-wide competitive streak, she set her goals around a five-year timetable, the standard follow-up marathon that breast cancer patients run.

Make five years clean and you're home, she thought, and so she commanded it in herself, visualizing all-clear and cancer-free at the five-year finish line. She made it four.

"I didn't question it. [Cancer] could hit anyone; why should I be above anyone else who has it?" she says. "A big part of it was, I had been through it and I'd caught it early again the second time, so I didn't feel like I was going to die. Was concerned about the chemo and what it does to you, but I didn't feel like I was going to die. So, it was just, 'OK, this is what it is and we'll just fight it the best we can."

Many would have been bitter for this new setback, or empty of the grit to again climb the steep physical and emotional hill before them. Everett, however, reached out and clawed at the cancerous dirt, through more chemo, more cutting. In this cruel second act, she was mad -- mad at her body, mad at the cancer, mad at the retracing of brutal, nauseous steps. But never, not once, mad at God.

"Things happen in our lives good and not so good, but God uses it all in His plan for our lives," she says. "There is a quote by [author] Corrie ten Boom that I really like: 'When we allow God to use all the experiences of our lives, they become unique and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.' Our experiences are God shaping us for our future and these experiences were molding me for whatever's coming."

This time, Everett crossed the five-year finish line cancer-free and hasn't looked back. But she hasn't shut the ordeal out of her memory, instead regularly revisiting it to inspire others in their fight.

"I've never been extremely happy that I had cancer, but I can see how it has molded my life," she says. "I am thankful that today I can step into somebody else's life and we can talk and I can share how I got through it. There's so many times somebody says, 'Hey, so-and-so is going through this, could you call and talk to them?' I say yes because that's what gives meaning to going through the disease. I want to call somebody because it gives purpose to what I went through."

Everett relates these stories of her life from a stylish, spotless office tucked above the showroom floor at one of the dealerships. Hard work and smart management have blessed the family business, to say nothing of Everett's down home, girl-next-door commercials, many of them featuring her beloved grandchildren and dogs. The spots have made her one of the more familiar faces around the state, but recognizing someone and understanding them are two very different things. For every person who admires the family's success, there is one tearing them down because of it and as spokesperson, she's an easy place to start.

"One of the things that bothers me is that people have a preconceived idea of who I am," she says. "I almost feel like they think, 'That's somebody who thinks they're somebody,' and that always hurts my feelings, because they don't know who I am. I was raised out in the country. I was taught to not judge people by where they are in life. To me, we're just all equal. I just wish people would understand that."

Still, when opportunities to serve find her, she's undeterred by critics and focuses instead on how she can help. Such is how Benton's nonprofit Christian Community Care Clinic went from dream to reality, a signature accomplishment that lights up her face to talk about.

"We started the clinic back in 1999, and it was a big thing to get started for people who were under-insured in Saline County and did not have access to medical care," Everett says. "It's still going strong, so that's really exciting."

Through the clinic, Everett gets to dust off her nursing bedside manner as a volunteer. As always, her faith directs her patient interactions and time has only solidified that bond.

"As a student, I worked as a tech at St. Vincent's and I remember a priest there. We got to pray together. That was a neat experience for me," she says. "Of course, now I'm even more bold about it. At the clinic I'm usually volunteering as the exit nurse so I get to listen to what's going on in patients' lives a little bit more. We pray all the time."

A couple of years ago, she was lured into another nonprofit ministry, this time leading women from the destructive chapters of their lives into brighter, more hopeful futures.

"I'd known about a ministry that a friend of mine was doing called Christian Women's Job Corps," she says. "Initially, I was like, 'I don't want to hear about it, because I don't have time to do this.' But it hit me that it was something that needed to be done here."

So began Women Equipped, a program open to women 18 and older looking to emerge from their darkest circumstances be it addiction, domestic violence, incarceration or abuse. Participants are led through 12 weeks of structured educational programs including basic computer and job skills, employment interviewing, healthy relationships, communication skills and Bible study.

Everett serves as one of four site coordinators for the program -- offered to the women free of charge -- so she gets to know participants' stories and see their struggles up close.

"Volunteers invest their lives into these people to give them a hand up, not a hand out," she says. "It's a Christian-based program where we improve their skills for the job force, but also in other areas. One of the most important parts, for instance, are the relationship classes on boundaries."

As Everett talks about the ministry, the mention of the program's first three graduates brings a broad smile while the promise of a new building to accommodate more participants sparks a gleam in her eye.

"We're all broken," she says. "It's not like, 'Oh, here's this now let me fix you.' It's like, 'We're going to do life together.' We're not just trying to tell you to change to our ways. We're going to try to guide you into the way you want to navigate a better life for yourself.

"We're hoping to grow; I'm all fired up about that right now. We've got 15 computers so that will be our max of students, although I'm not ready to grow quite that big next semester." Another smile.

Among the tastefully sparse decor of Everett's minimalist office are tokens and trinkets from a life well-lived and freely shared. An OBU football helmet and coffee table book give her away as a trustee, for example, while various commendations and framed clippings mark other community accomplishments. Grinning grandkids peer over and around these; some have appeared with her in so many commercials the state has had a front-row seat to their growing up.

"I have one granddaughter, I don't know if she enjoys her celebrity, but I was in Walmart or somewhere with her and she'll go by and say it loud, 'Do they know you're Susie Everett?'" Everett says with a half eye roll. "Sometimes the commercial shoots are complete meltdowns and sometimes I think they kind of like playing that part, especially the little ones."

Even after a long conversation, when you think you've got to the bottom of her, you find there are more facets reflecting more light. An offhanded mention of the stage, for instance, and she tells of a string of starring roles she's played in the local community theater, winning several "BenTonys" in the process. It's an apt hobby, given the many roles she plays locally and across the state on a long and diverse list of boards and committees, the only commonality among them being propelled by the Saline County spitfire.

"She's one of the top three leaders on the board. That alone tells you a little bit about her," says Dr. Ben Sells, president of Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. "The four words that come to mind in regard to her being a trustee are, she's business savvy, she's passionate, humble and gracious. And, she has a way of uniquely combining all those things."

"She is very intuitive. She is great at seeing a need and wanting to meet it," says Rachel Hubbard, co-director of Second Chance Youth Ranch in Paron. "I think it's really the heart behind what we do. She's able to connect with our mission of helping children who've been removed from abusive and neglectful families, because her family is so important to her. I think that really pulls at her heartstrings as a family person, a grandmother."

Predictably, Everett is uncomfortable with such remarks and she's quick to share credit with the many other people she serves alongside. And, of course, she nods humbly to the source that has made it all possible from the start.

"Things like the clinic or the job training, it's not me. It's God doing it," she says. "Those changes that happen or that healing that happens, I couldn't do that, only God could. All I do is, I love the Lord and I love people. I care about them and I let God work through me to reach them."

Print Headline: Joy Susan Everett

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