NOTE: This is what I wrote, by request, to be submitted to the national court reporting association's magazine as a memorial for my sister, JaVee, killed by accident in early May. Whether or not it is ever published, this is the original version I post in her memory.
JaVee Suhr, my sister, was positively demented about court reporting. She may have persuaded me to follow her into the profession in my career change, but I would never approach her proficiency nor her occupational joy. From the time she entered Bill Braun's Northern Technical at the end of Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis to her death on Dad's birthday this year from a shocking four-wheeler accident, JaVee was her own best competitor. She loved writing and practiced endlessly, for those school speed tests, during slow business periods, for her merit writing proficiency level, for any upcoming case with difficult jargon, for mastering real time with ease. Helping me out two years ago when I, a retired state district court reporter, had to re-create a 2500-page lost criminal bill of exceptions from 1994-1995 showed me all over again her thorough professionalism, as she made special brief forms for recurring names, DNA terms, as I knew she did for all her jobs, usually getting documents and exhibits ahead of time to have her special dictionaries prepared. A superlative businesswoman, when attorneys wanted transcripts the cliched day before yesterday, JaVee would stay up all hours to get the work to them three days ago. Her efficiency, experienced poise, diligent performance, quality work product gained her widespread respect and recognition across the Omaha legal community into state and national areas. That's undoubtedly why we had a tremendous outpouring of support, respect, and sympathy during those awful final days, with dozens of lawyers, judges, reporters following her www.carepage.com medical entries, then appearing at visitation and the funeral.
Her unique name was our parents' initials, J for Jack, V for Velma, spelled phonetically. Tall and slender like Dad, only a half inch shorter than my six feet, she was a beautiful exercise and health addict looking years younger: the EMTs at the accident scene thought her 35-40, which would've made her laugh at 52. Undoubtedly all that helped her with attorneys, though I suspect it was more her easy smiling grace, her confidence, her job skills that mattered most in her constant networking. After a brief entry period with Dorothea Pharris and Associates, she created her own business partnerships, establishing Thibault Suhr and Thibault in 1976 with Gary and Alvin Thibault. JaVee served as co-president representing the freelancers, with Margaret Kirkeby representing the officials, for the Nebraska state association. She regularly went to national meetings, leadership conferences, often returning happily excited at new accomplishments, such as the time she came home from Florida ecstatic that a new friend had showed her a new way to write numbers, which she promptly demonstrated. (She was always showing me her latest software, newest masteries.) She had no trouble traveling nationally, or to Sweden and Denmark, later Australia, for depositions, coming back with anecdotes about idioms and accents.
Of course, her life wasn't entirely her profession. Her ICU respiratory specialist in her last days had played volleyball with her 30 years earlier. She was likewise involved with golfing, her church, boating, following local sports activities such as Creighton U. basketball, the College World Series, and our various hockey teams, and especially with her family and hosts of friends. (She never went anywhere without meeting people she knew.) She leaves her daughter, Cianne; her partner, Rodger Hanten, and his two daughters, Dana and Courtney; her sister, a virtual twin despite a slight age difference, Sue Rohrer and her family; me, her brother, Gary Luckert; her ex-husband, Greg Suhr. We will hear her "Give me a hug" or "Thank you, God" only in poignant memory now.
It seemed very apt that a courthouse friend called her the Tiger Woods of reporting, at least for this area. I suspect if there were an Oscar equivalent in court reporting, JaVee would have competed hard for that.
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