Throughout her more than six decades of life, Claremore resident Sue Ingle has overcome adversity time and time again.

When faced teen pregnancy, divorce and cancer, she has relied on her faith to carry her through.

Born in Broken Arrow, Sue was 4 when her family moved to California where her father had the opportunity to go into business with his brother and brother-in-law. The three men ran a gas station, garage, motel, cafe, tow truck service and ambulance service in the Mojave Desert.

“I went to a one-room school for eight grades in Baker, Calif.,” she said. “It was in the middle of the desert. I remember it being 120 degrees at midnight. You couldn’t sleep.”

When it was time for her to start high school, Sue’s father moved the family to Barstow where she could attend a regular school.

“At 16 I had a daughter,” Sue said. “Nobody knew I was pregnant until at six and a half months along I fell and broke a bone in my back. The ambulance took me to the hospital where they did x-rays of my back — that’s how my parents found out.”

The stigma carried by out-of-wedlock pregnancy at the time caused Sue’s family to send her to Oakland, Calif. to have the baby where they had been in contact with a couple interested in adoption.

Her family told everyone who asked that Sue was sent there to be treated by a specialist for her back.

“Back then it was humiliating,” Sue said. “My mother’s whole life was ‘what will the neighbors think?’ It was the generation she was brought up in.”

Sue was reunited with her daughter 45 years later after a series of events culminated with their first meeting in July 2002.

“I just needed to know she was happy and okay,” Sue said. “She told me that before she got my call she was driving one day and thought to herself, ‘I wish my birth mother would try to find me.’ So it was all ordained of God and when the timing was right, God prepared her heart for my call. We talked for hours. I was thankful to find out she had a wonderful family who loved her and gave her a wonderful life.”

Today, Sue and Kim enjoy a close relationship and travel to see each other frequently.

“After I had her I went to summer school and got caught up with my class,” Sue said. “The next year was senior year. I graduated on Thursday and got married that Saturday. My main ambition in life was always to be a mother.”

And a mother she was, having four more children: Mark, Steve, Kurt and Tami.

After Sue’s mother moved back to Broken Arrow from California, Sue and her kids visited her on vacation in April 1977.