Susie Best

Susie Best, 86, of Waco, TX, passed peacefully in her sleep on March 30, 2023.

A native of Oklahoma, she grew up in Tulsa and Oklahoma City and earned an undergraduate degree in Home Economics with a minor in Fashion Merchandising at Oklahoma State University in 1959. She met Robert (Bob) Leo Best at a bridge table in the OSU Student Union and were married from May 31, 1959 (didn’t want to be a June Bride) until his passing in 1988. Turning her lifelong obsession for clothes into a career, Susie worked in specialty clothing shops in Dallas, TX (where she also did a bit of modeling), Memphis, TN (where she waited on Priscilla Presley, Elvis’s subsequent girlfriends, and a teenaged Cybill Shepherd), and El Paso, TX before she found the perfect job combining golf, being social, selling clothes, and wrapping gift packages in the Golf Shop of El Paso Country Club (EPCC) from 1976-1991. She moved to Waco in 2020 to be near her family after living in El Paso for 47 years.

Susie was preceded in death by her husband, her mother, Mary Bessie Bickel, her stepfather, Buford Woodrow Bickel, and her father, Harry Parkhurst.

She is survived by her son, Robert Leo Best, Jr., daughter-in-law Julianne Lungren Best, granddaughters Katherine Lee Best and Jessica Charis Best, of Hewitt, TX, and countless friends at EPCC and The Delaney at Lake Waco who will likely never forget her.

A private graveside service will take place at Fort Bliss National Cemetery in El Paso, where she will be laid to rest next to her late husband.