Painters, carpenters, bankers, teachers, travellers, electricians,
plumbers….. many folks buy Susie Duprey’s stuffed sandwiches or
baguettes most noontimes from the Walpole (NH) Grocery on Main Street.
Walk into the shop and more often than not you’ll hear Susie talking or
laughing at the far end of the shop. Or she’ll be looking to see who
just walked in. She’ll think, “What’s his or her favorite sandwich? Are
they regulars or first timers?” This is no new job for Susie, no fill-in
position. She started there in 2006. Furthermore, she has lived within a
six-mile radius of the Grocery since bursting onto the scene as a baby
forty-three years ago.
She was born at Bellows Falls Hospital April 14, 1982. Her mother,
Matilda Castilla, is now Spanish/American and grew up in El Puerto,
Santa Maria on the southern tip of Spain. Fifty years ago, as a young
woman, she met Alan Duprey from Walpole, NH when he was in the US Armed
Forces stationed in southern Spain. As Susie pointed out, “My Mom is
hyper, high strung, LOVES to cook. She’s ‘the’ source of my energy. My
Dad is solid, deeply loving and has worked most of his working life as
an electrician for Hamblet Electricians in Keene.
“I grew up on Ford Avenue in Walpole, a three-minute walk from where I
work now. I went to Walpole Elementary School and then to Fall Mountain
High School and then worked at Murray’s Restaurant just up the road.
After high school I was a “nail tech” at The Colony Mill in Keene from
2003-2006. Then I worked in the packing room at Burdick’s Chocolates two
miles up the road packing intricate boxes of fine chocolates in the
packing room. I spent the day looking down at and filling little boxes
with fabulous chocolates all day. I couldn’t be out in the chocolate
production area with other people doing stuff because I had to keep my
head down as I packed chocolate elephants or mice…..
“ In 2006, age twenty-four, a position opened up at Walpole Grocery, two
miles down the road in the center of town. Jim Mort was managing the
store for Larry Burdick. I started making lunch sandwiches. I had a
“position” and I guess I still do! I loved it IMMEDIATELY. I smile all
the time. I snack all day long. I COOK to make a living and then I go
home and cook for me and my husband Alan and friends and family and…..”
My daily record number of sandwiches which we sold in the Grocery is
168, but it mostly is around 80 each day! Teachers from Walpole
Elementary ask me to make sandwiches for a noontime meeting. Bensonwood
calls for sandwiches for their crew or for students at their Heartwood
School for Carpentry. Chroma Technology in Bellows Falls calls in an
order or Walpole Savings Bank next door asks for packed lunches and two
sides with soup-of-the-day. The list goes on. I LOVE to take care of
people, to make people happy, to feed people good, simple food, just
like my Mom. If you don’t eat good, healthy food you don’t feel good.
“Then I go home to cook dinner for my now husband Seldon Lund who ‘does concrete’ for SJL Concrete in Keene. I’ve been with him for nineteen years. We met at Fall Mountain High School and hung out as friends for
five or six years and then dated for nineteen more years. We didn’t
marry until February 15, 2025. I didn’t want to rush into the marriage
ceremony. My Mom and I needed a year to PLAN every single detail. A
couple days before the wedding, for example, Seldon and I drove to
Portland, Maine to get 300 fresh oysters for the reception. On our
wedding day, I arranged for a pair of black horses to draw a green
farmer’s carriage to take us from the Historical Society in the village
to the nearby Town Hall – a romantic trip of a few hundred yards, where
we had a reception for 206 guests.
“Kayley, my right-hand woman at Walpole Grocery, prepared all the food
for 200+ wedding guests. The pastry chef at Burdick’s made our wedding
cake. In the invitations, I asked everyone to request a song which
musician Shamas Martin from Vermont played. I requested “Stand By Me”
for when my Dad and I danced – the only people on the dance floor. It
was heaven. Seldon and I just celebrated our 20^th anniversary!” ( This
writer has to interject here that the interview for this profile took
just shy of two years to arrange because Susie simply had too much on
her plate leading up to her wedding /and after/.)
Her right-hand woman in the Grocery is Kayley, another dynamo and the
purchaser for the shop (and she looks like Susie’s younger sister).
Susie starts her work day at 6:00 AM and works at a fever pitch until
1:00 in the afternoon when the midday sandwich rush begins to tail off.
She has regulars like Nate Shipman who works for Janciewicz and Son, a
roofing contractor in Bellows Fall, VT – across the river. She knows
what Nate wants for lunch and has it stored ready in the four-level
sandwich-fridge up front. Or she’ll prepare lunch for fifteen teachers
at the elementary school attending a workshop – “My own little Meals on
Wheels!: spaghetti squash, fritters stuffed with leeks, roasted tomatoes, peppers and spinach. Other days I’ll take food to The Food Shelf. And when I get home, I’ll can eighteen quarts of tomato sauce from our own garden or pickle cukes.
“And three times a year, Seldon and I go to Portland, Maine for a
couple-days’ vacation to EAT. First restaurant: slab pizza and focaccia.
Then to Standard Bakery for the BEST baguettes, then to Jay’s Oyster Bar
for his lobster rolls and a bucket of steamers and then we end at the
Customhouse Wharf Fish Market where we buy smoked mussels, lobsters and
three dozen oysters. Then we check into a certain Bed and Breakfast
because they let me cook our dinner in their kitchen. And we always end
up, before returning to Walpole, at Micucci’s Restaurant on India Street
in Portland.”
And just to further enliven life in Traditional Walpole, two years ago
one Gianluca Paris moved from running his restaurant in Keene to become
the food manager at Burdick’s Restaurant and Walpole Grocery. (Luca was
born in Torino, Italy in 1967, moved to the US in 1969 grew up in Lower
Manhattan and moved to New Hampshire a few years ago.) Sparks fly when
he and Susie – Italian and “Spaniard” - meet in the kitchen.
As a Married Woman, Susie carries on as the sandwich maker and sometimes chef for Walpole Market and lives with her husband Seldon four miles north near Cold River in North Walpole. That is, she has lived a deeply
rich, even exhilarating life pretty much in a six-mile radius. But there’s one final insight. When she and Seldon went on their honeymoon to Puerto Rico, she took along a bottle of what she regards as the Best
Balsamic Vinegar – Olivewood Brand– just in case she couldn’t find it on
the island.