"Former Playboy Playmate Does Good": a subtitle that would accurately encapsulate the thrust of Susie Scott Krabacher’s autobiography Angels of a Lower Flight. What this subtitle wouldn’t capture are the nuances of pain – that of Krabacher’s abusive childhood and perhaps more importantly, that of the thousands of Haitian children that she now feeds and cares for through her charitable foundation Mercy and Sharing.
Angels of a Lower Flight chronicles Krabacher’s first-person recollections of the abuse and strictly religious home she grew up in. Not a happy, feel-good read by any stretch of the imagination, she doesn’t skirt away from her grandfather’s predatory sexual abuse nor her mother’s mental disorders and violent tendencies. Seeking to escape her childhood home, she dropped out of grade ten, took an office job, and before long found herself sinking into the moral depravity and boundary-free world of a Playboy playmate. Sinking into drug addiction and a doomed marriage to a criminal, she eventually finds herself homeless and working as an unskilled domestic.
After her remarriage to a successful attorney, Krabacher eventually feels led to aid children in poverty-stricken countries. Without training or the support of any official organization, she strikes out to see what can be done for the children of Haiti. Krabacher’s fortitude and persistence in setting up orphanages, feeding programs, and schools in this spiritually dark country are amazing to read, considering her complete lack of what many would consider to be the requisite formal qualifications.
Her descriptions of the pain, fear, hunger, and death that she encounters in her journey are heartbreaking. Reading her memoirs, one can’t help but be captured by the pleas of these Haitian little ones as they are cast away, mistreated, and purposefully disposed of. Haiti is now indelibly imprinted on the hearts of my family, and our home has been filled with prayers, conversation, further research and much heart-searching.
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