Suzanne Aristides, of Northport, nutritional microbiologist, physician, dies at 78

Jonas Jeanty Aristides said he knew the "firecracker" specialness that was his mother, Suzanne Aristides, a nutritional microbiologist and medical doctor who packed her vacation suitcases with vitamin-filled oatmeal packets in case she saw malnourished families.

She was in her early 40s when she adopted 2-month-old Jonas in Haiti.

She had sacrificed her prime childbearing years for love because the divorcee she wed when she was in her 30s, Broadway actor and choreographer John Aristides, was 18 years her senior and did not want more children beyond his first marriage.

But her husband relented as he approached his senior years, appreciating her kind nature, seeing her bond with children and wanting her to have someone when he was gone, their son said.

"If I was hurting ... it’s almost like she knew what I was thinking when I was thinking it," recalled Jeanty Aristides, of Northport. "It was as though she had given birth to me naturally. I got to see what love looked like every day. In my house, you could smell love, you could touch it."

Aristides, who had worked in a Great Neck practice, then at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory until 2008, died of a stroke on Aug. 5. The Northport resident was 78. 

In their home, John Aristides, whom she married in 1977, created a Victorian-style bedroom fit for a queen after his wife suffered from leukemia in the 1990s.

A weakening Suzanne had expected to die, Jeanty Aristides said, but her husband told her, " ‘I don’t care what the report says. I’m going to love you back to life.’ "

Bronx-born and raised in East Norwich, Aristides began distilling her kindness and worldview as a child encountering French, Puerto Rican and other cultures traveling with her architect father, her son said. Throughout her life, she spoke of food as a basic human right and starvation as the biggest shame in society. She expressed her strong opinions in actions ranging from marching against the Vietnam War to bypassing fruit grown in certain countries.

Traveling or staying local, Aristides was always elegant, family and friends said. From fedora to footwear, she dressed monochromatically — white, yellow and pink were favorites — because this conferred style and height, they said.

"Even just on a regular day, like a normal doing errands kind of day, she would be dressed up, with sparkling jewelry," said friend Lisa Wolk, whose family owned Somewhere in Time in Northport, Aristides’ favorite store for antique jewelry. "On anyone else, it would look ridiculous, but she just made it work."

Her inquisitiveness as a family doctor led her to notice the connection between health problems and poor nutrition, her son said.

What launched her nutrition career was a box of Froot Loops cereal in Norway, Jeanty Aristides said. She noticed the cereal was "super pale" compared to the U.S. version, he said.

She began looking into how food was grown and processed, her son said. When a News 12 anchor and "Jeopardy" host Alex Trebek each announced they had cancer, she acted like their doctor in researching what they ate, Jeanty Aristides recalled. When she joined him at a restaurant bar, she would quiz patrons on their health and diets, then advised them on the diets for their health.

"It was not sufficient for her to just tell someone, ‘Hey, this is what you should eat,’ because she believed that even the things you think are good for you could be contaminated," her son said. "That’s why she went in-depth on studies."

Aristides volunteered with Doctors Without Borders, spending stints in Puerto Rico and elsewhere abroad working at health care clinics and gifting friends with collectibles.

"My mom also believed fervently in one sole purpose — it is to give," Jeanty Aristides said. "It’s to die empty, it is to give everything that God has given you, to share it with the world."

Aristides was cremated Aug. 8. A service for both her and her husband, who died in 2020, will be held at a later date at their Maine property.