Susan Soults Jackett, known for her genius at caring for and connecting with others, died of cardiac arrest in her husband’s arms at her Wellfleet home in the early morning hours of Sept. 27, 2024. She was 78.

The daughter of Harold and Mary Soults, Susan was born in Provincetown on Jan. 24, 1946. Margaret Clive, a childhood friend with whom she had reconnected in recent years, recalled the hours they spent together as young girls walking in the woods to find a mushroom house, sometimes walking to Race Point and back.

“Susan always looked beautiful,” Margaret wrote in an email. “She showed me how to curl my eyelashes when we would fix our hair and makeup together. She brought me out of my shell.”

At Provincetown High School, Susan sang in the Glee Club and worked on the newspaper staff. She received three “senior superlatives” in the Long Pointer in 1964, her graduation year: Best Figure, Most Attractive, and Most Serious. Her ambition was “to lead a happy and simple life with no regrets.” By all accounts, she did.

While still in high school, Susan appeared as a model in local advertisements, including on a billboard for a cold storage fish company, and in fashion shows at the Provincetown Inn. With her mother’s encouragement, she qualified for the Miss Universe pageant. “But she didn’t care,” said her son Beau. “She really just wanted a family.”

Rather than going to nursing school in Boston, Susan chose at 19 to marry Jimmy Smith, a music teacher whom she had met when he was vacationing in Provincetown. Susan lived with him in Iowa, where they adopted two Native American children, Kim and Shelby, in 1968. Jimmy got a teaching job in Provincetown, and they returned. The marriage, however, soon ended in divorce.

Susan and Tony Jackett reconnected in December 1971. He had danced with Susan when he was in fifth grade and carried a torch for her for years. It is unclear whether Susan remembered having danced with Tony, but the two hit it off. They married in November 1972.

Susan and Tony had four children together, and Susan became a dedicated homemaker, creating a sanctuary for her family. “She was selfless as a mom,” her daughter Braunwyn said. “She was really good at it.”

“She was like the town mom,” said Beau. “She made all the kids feel comfortable, taking genuine interest in each one.”

When the children got older, Susan went to work, first as a cleaner for a friend’s cottage colony in Truro and then, in 1987, at the Donut Shop, a popular gathering place in Provincetown. “She knew everyone,” Tony said.

Susan also worked the register at Days Market in North Truro, inspected homes for property management companies, collected lunch money at Provincetown High School, and worked the front desk in the records department at Outer Cape Health Services. She worked with Tony when he was Truro’s harbormaster, surveying Pamet Harbor as an assistant shellfish warden. She also volunteered at Mass Appeal.

In an online remembrance, Crecia Cipriano wrote that “Susan improved the quality of every life she touched, just by virtue of her genuine kindness, love and appreciation for the good she saw and brought out in everyone, combined with the ability to get a kick out of anything.”

“She seemed to love people not in spite of their flaws, not because of them, but simply with them,” wrote her friend Margaret.

Susan is survived by her husband, Tony Jackett of Wellfleet; her sister, Cheryl Crosby of Deland, Fla.; her daughters, Shelby Smith and husband Raphael Serrano of Eagle Butte, S.Dak. and Braunwyn Jackett and partner Nathaniel McKean of North Truro; her sons, Beau Jackett of Truro, Luke Jackett and wife Kelsey of Los Angeles, and Kyle Jackett of Wellfleet; her stepdaughter, Ava Worthington of Colorado; her grandchildren, James, Nico, Jordan, and Riccardo Serrano, Etel Amato, Ezra and Iris McKean, and Cole and Lucie Jackett; her great-granddaughter, Daisy Casper; and her nieces, Erika Meads and Justine Crosby.

She was predeceased by her son Kim Smith.

Visiting hours will be held at Nickerson Funeral Home in Wellfleet from 4 to 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 11. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated at St. Peter the Apostle Church in Provincetown at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 12, followed by a celebration of life at the Harbor Hotel in Provincetown from noon to 3 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Susan’s honor can be made to the Mass. General Cancer Center in Waltham.