Khoury trades New England snow for high-tech career
MADISON – For Sue Khoury, Madison is a “real jewel” for its relatively low crime rate, proximity to high-tech jobs, low cost of living and access to restaurants and entertainment venues.
A native of Salem, Mass., Khoury was adopted as a one-year-old after living in three foster homes. A self-confessed nerd in school, she “yearned to be a hippie but was too young and uptight.”
She attended but was bored with Salem State College and switched to photography school in Boston. “I rebelled again and moved to Seattle, Wash. Several years and an ex-husband later, I found myself in New Hampshire. I returned to college to study computer science and started my career with a defense and aerospace company,” Khoury said.
Khoury moved to Madison from New Hampshire, where she knew only three neighbors because of “people’s reluctance to get involved with one another’s lives. They’re frantically busy working, shoveling snow … Metro Madison is very different. When my dad died, neighbors I barely knew cooked for me, visited me, hugged me. It’s a much more intimate and demonstrative sensibility.”
In 1995, she secured a job with “a cutting-edge missile program in Raytheon’s Huntsville operations. I never looked back, even though I left family and most of my friends behind,” she said. Khoury retired in 2011.
“My life partner is Jim Tylman, a retired profession logistics engineering manager and all-around tinkerer, humorist and fiercely-protective family guy. Jim’s son Ken is a software engineer and lives in our neighborhood. His son Mike is a retired Coastie working his way into law enforcement in Memphis,” Sue said. “Grandchildren are Sarah, starting college in Mobile; Satcher, a Mobile middle-schooler; and Mollie, an aspiring criminal investigator in Memphis.”
An avid dog lover, Khoury fostered her first pair of puppies in 2011, Chihuahua/dachshund mixes Comet and Cupid. To-date, she has fostered 30-plus dogs. She coordinated the silent auction for Madison Animal Rescue Foundation’s 2017 fundraiser.
In addition, she is a “wildly active volunteer” with Master Gardeners of North Alabama as vice president, publicist, social media chair and application advisor. This volunteering “is a terrific way of eschewing politics or issues du jour to focus on bettering our local community,” Khoury said.
Sue and Jim enjoy Huntsville Symphony Orchestra and Broadway Theatre League shows. Her top restaurants are Mangia, Taziki’s, Fulin’s, Buena Vista and Casa Blanca.
“I want to expand our Master Gardener program to Madison Senior Center,” she said. “I remain committed to Madison schools’s outdoor classrooms and their teachers, as well as to MARF.”
