Marjorie R. Wallace

WALLACE, Marjorie R., 74, of Cotuit, 30 year resident of Sudbury and of Brookline, Saturday, December 6, 2014 peacefully and painlessly at Cape Cod Hospital. Born in Boston on May 9, 1940, she was the daughter of the late Jacob and Sara (Klier) Wallace. Marge was the beloved sister of Deborah E. Wallace of Lincoln and David H. and Jessie Wallace of Wellesley; the loving and devoted aunt of Nina Feldman and Sylvia Vasquez, Liza Feldman and Katie Crapulli, and Julia and James Rosenthal, all of Maynard; and the cherished and playful great aunt of William and Alexandra Rosenthal. Marge is also survived by a huge network of dear friends whom she thought of as family. Marge was raised in Brookline and graduated from Brookline High School with the class of 1958. She received Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from the University of Michigan. After college, Marge moved to N.Y. City and worked for a short time as a stage manager for a flamenco dance company and then as a marketing specialist at Young & Rubicam. After leaving New York, she settled in Sudbury in the early 1970’s and worked as a financial analyst with MetLife Insurance Company for over 30 years until her retirement to Cotuit in 2007. Marge was extremely active in the Sudbury and Cotuit communities. In Sudbury, for a total of 14 years, Marge was a member of the Finance Committee and the Negotiating Advisory Committee for 10 years. She also was a member of the St. Anselm's Task Force from 2004 to 2005 and the Town Meeting Procedures Committee in 1987.. In Cotuit she was a member of the board of directors of the Friends of the Cotuit Library and was also very active in the governing of its Fire and Police departments. Marge was an excellent athlete in her youth and an especially accomplished tennis player. She was an avid gardener and an unwavering fan of the University of Michigan football team and New England Patriots. She enjoyed her retirement by spending many happy hours on the beach in Cotuit, watching the boats, reading, and talking for hours with her friends. Funeral services will be held on Wednesday, December 10, at 11:00 AM at the Duckett - J. S. Waterman & Sons Home of Memorial Tribute, 656 Boston Post Road (Rte. 20), Sudbury, (978)-443-5777 followed by a luncheon at 29 Sudbury where the family invites all funeral attendees (29 Hudson Rd, Sudbury). Interment will be private at a later date. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made in Marge’s memory to the Friends of the Cotuit Library, PO Box 648, Cotuit, MA 02635, the Cotuit Firefighter’s Benevolent Association, Inc. or to The American Autoimmune-Related Diseases Association (AARDA).

Eulogy from Marge's Sister, Deborah Wallace

Many of you have known Marge for a very, very long time – some as far back as elementary and high school. And most of have come to know her and enjoy her and respect her and love her through her huge social network or through her professional and civic life as an adult. But I’ve known her for a really long time, longer than anyone here -- except for my brother who beats me out by a nose -- so I’d like to fill you in on her childhood and my childhood with her and tell you some things about her that you probably don’t know.

Marge was 6 years older than I, and because of that age gap, I have little, if any, recollection of her personality or how we interacted. But I do have vivid memories of what she looked like, made possible in large part by my parents’ apparent obsession with having us photographed professionally at least once a year until I was about 7 or 8 years old. I think it’s fair to say that we all dreaded those photography sessions and so in our adulthood portrait sitting and posing for the camera has taken a back seat – maybe a last row seat – in the activities the Wallace children enjoy.

But what a treasure trove of pictures we have now. Looking through those photographs over the past few days, I’ve seen something in her that I’d never noticed before. Serenity. Serenity is defined as a state of freedom from storm or disturbance, freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts. That’s not a word I would have used or ever did use to describe Marge in her adult years. Serenity was taken from her many years ago by life’s tribulations but especially by years of chronic and excruciating pain from a host of devastating medical problems. But from some sub terrestrial part of her being, serenity returned during the last hours of her life and so for her, life really did come full circle.

The earliest and most robust memories I have of Marge go back to when I was 7 or 8 when she became my singular babysitter. I remember asking my parents almost every night whether they were going out because I was so eager to be with Marge and I knew what a good time we would have. And those times were some of the most wonderful times of my childhood.

Back then, I had the metabolism of a hummingbird and was constantly hungry. There was never a lack of food at our house and my mother was a master of heavy-handed serving, and despite always being offered and usually accepting 2nd and sometimes 3rd portions, my appetite never seemed to quell. But on the nights when Marge was babysitting, she let me eat to my heart’s content. She would make me grilled cheese and bologna sandwiches at 9 o’clock. She would let me finish off a box of Mallow-Mars before I went to bed and sat patiently as I dissected those domes of artificial everything, one by one. And to ensure I was sated, she would let me down a few dill pickles before going to sleep.

When I was in her care during the day and once she had her license, she would drive me to a tiny Patisserie in Brookline Village and double-park while I went in to get enough éclairs to last me through the afternoon. Knowing that that might not do the trick, she would make an extra stop to get me a bag of Jack’s Cheese Twists. She was a health nut before her time.

Although I was almost always appreciative of her willingness to appease my appetite, there was one occasion when something went very haywire and I momentarily forgot all those wonderful times she had indulged me.

Some of you from this area may remember Norumbega Park which was a fabulous amusement park in Newton. It offered canoeing and paddle boating, gardens, amusement rides and of course food vendors. During one visit, my parents bought each of us the requisite cotton candy (how we wound up with any teeth is still a miracle to me). My father handed me the blue cloud of spun sugar and Marge the pink one. Tantrum time. I was so upset that she had the pink one that I handed mine back to my father and promptly bit my sister in her thigh – very successfully, I would add, because she had tooth marks on that leg for several days. I don’t have a strong memory of her reaction, but I’m sure she cried from the pain. My pain was much worse, though, and lasted much longer.

For many summers, Marge went to an overnight camp named Queen Lake in a small town in Central Massachusetts. Of course, she settled in the very first day as is it were a place she had lived all her life. She loved Queen Lake and thrived on being thrown into a mix of strangers young and old. After several years as a camper, she became a tennis instructor and having admired her game over the years and knowing that if I got homesick she would be right there, I decided to give Queen Lake a try. It turned out that overnight camp wasn’t really for me but Marge made it more than tolerable. She taught me the basics of good tennis – strokes and sportsmanship -- and gave me tips on how to avoid wearing the hideous yellow and brown uniform that campers were required to wear every day.

But she was the most helpful in showing me how to sneak forbidden food into my cabin. Our greatest coup was smuggling in a 10-pound salami that my parents brought on visiting day. I was never caught and began to enjoy camp much more now that I could eat chunks of salami at will under my cot.

At Brookline High, she was an avid football fan and after going through what I thought was an unnecessarily competitive try-out process, she became a BHS cheerleader.

Back then, I couldn’t understand why that meant so much to her and how she could generate so much energy for it. I couldn’t conceive of enjoying an activity where you were constantly prompted to yell louder and where every few minutes you were being tossed on and off the shoulders of teen age girls some of whom looked like they couldn’t carry bear the weight of anything heavier than a big book. But I loved being in her room on Friday nights watching her get into her uniform -- a red, felt, twirly skirt lined with blue satin and a blue sweater with a huge red B sitting comfortably on her sternum. She looked adorable and was so pumped up in anticipation of revving up the crowd in a voice so loud it left her hoarse the next day.

An important part of her preparation was to slather pancake make-up on her face, arms, and legs so that she would look like a bronzed picture of health. Of course, she let me put that make-up on, too and when we were done applying it, we both thought we looked gorgeous, when in fact we looked alarmingly jaundiced.

There is one last childhood story that I want to share because for me it explains, at least in part, why Marge loved to garden. Who knows just where and when our passions develop, but gardening was unequivocally at the top of her list. My mother was an avid gardener (my father was an unwitting destroyer of gardens ) and although all the Wallaces love gardening, we’re each attracted to it for different reasons. Here’s my hypothesis for Marge’s lifelong passion for it.

As kids, she and I were both obsessed with cutting hair – doll’s hair, our own hair, other people’s hair, hair on the manes of rocking horses. We loved the process of snipping and clipping, using any kind of scissors that were handy – tiny sewing scissors, crimping scissors, kitchen shears or even my father’s medical curved blade scissors perfect for cutting in tight places especially against the skin.

My sister’s most effective use of scissors occurred when she was about 6 or 7 years old. I was an infant and so of course didn’t have the pleasure of witnessing the event, but my mother told me this story many times.

The “event” took place on a morning when my sister was having her school picture taken. When my mother was done with the morning ritual of braiding Marge’s hair, she left Marge to finish getting dressed herself and went downstairs to make breakfast. Marge was slower than usual coming down that morning, but my mother thought that because it was a special day she was probably taking extra care to look her best.

Mom waited a few minutes and then a few more and pretty quickly and intuitively decided that things must not be going smoothly. Just as she was getting up from the kitchen table to check on her, Marge came into the kitchen, perfectly dressed, and wearing a Native American headdress. Apparently that morning, she had been overcome with a desire to cut something and had cut off her left braid – at the scalp – cleverly, masking it with the headdress. And that, I believe, is how Marge came to love gardening and especially pruning.

There are so many more stories to tell but these are some that I think capture so much of who Marge was – a doting sister, a care taker, a teacher, an athlete, a fun-loving woman who marched to the tune of her own drum, and perhaps most of all, a woman who lived her life to the fullest refusing to let anything get in her way.

Eulogy From Marge's Niece, Liza Feldman

My sisters will confirm that I have basically no memories from my childhood, so my earliest memories of Marge are mostly related to playing blob tag in her amazing back yard on Nobscot Road and savoring the famous Marrone’s Bakery birthday cakes that we craved approximately 360 days a year. She probably also won the Aunt of the Year Award in 1987 when she and my grandmother took my sisters and me on what I am sure was a very relaxing Disney vacation. You will probably sense a theme here (especially after hearing my mom speak), but my memories of that trip involve eating fiddle-faddle in a hotel room and scalding my tongue on hot chocolate at a character-themed breakfast. I vaguely remember Marge vacillating between caring for me sympathetically and asking me why I would ever drink hot chocolate through a straw, but the rest is a blur.

Over the years though, my relationship with Marge grew into something very special – something that would be impossible for me to ever forget. Those meaningful memories include: seeing Marge in the stands at basically every single one of my sporting events in high school and college -- and many when I was coaching, vacationing to Miami with Marge one December break when I first started teaching, spending days and nights with her as she recovered from various orthopedic procedures over the years, having weekly phone chats with her to talk at length about books, movies, sports, friends, and life, sunbathing and socializing at Riley’s Beach with her in Cotuit (her most favorite place on earth), and, most recently, sitting quietly with her in the dark and holding hands during her final hours early last Saturday morning.

Like all of you, my family and I are grieving Marge’s death, but we are inspired by her life. Because of that, I have decided to focus my remarks today on some of the valuable lessons that I have learned over the past 36 years that I was fortunate enough to spend with my Aunt Marge.

Lesson 1: Citizenship and Service – Marge was a loyal citizen who never missed a chance to serve her community. She was an enthusiastic gardener and a pioneer in composting and recycling, acts of environmental service that she maintained until she was hospitalized this fall.

In addition to her environmental commitment, Marge regularly volunteered and invested in her community – even when she was working full-time, but especially in her retirement. Whether she was working with one of the town offices in Sudbury, handling the finances of the Cotuit library, or further educating herself on her community through a civics course relating to the inner workings of the police force, Marge made it a point to be involved.

Marge modeled that being an active community member meant having an opinion and speaking your mind – even when it wasn’t popular. She had incredibly strong opinions, but I never got the sense that she especially needed me (or anyone else!) to approve of her ideas. Whenever I talked to her about politics or controversial issues, it was far more important to her that I simply had an opinion – and of course, that I exercised my right to vote. Marge was so committed to voting that she worked an 8-hour day at the polls this fall about two weeks after an elbow replacement surgery.

Marge’s years of service in Sudbury and Cotuit resulted in incredibly close relationships with other community members: politicians, board members, poll workers, post office workers, neighbors, librarians, fire chiefs, and all of you. You will all appreciate knowing that the nurses in the ICU were affectionately referring to Marge as “The Mayor” because of the outpouring of support over the past month. I guess the real lesson here is that if you dedicate a lifetime to serving your community, your community will serve you in return, especially during times of need. Thank you all for that – we, Marge’s family, are incredibly appreciative and grateful for her Cape Cod support system.

Lesson 2: Organization – Marge was systematic and deliberate in all that she approached. Some of you may have seen the sign outside Marge’s front door (and on display in the other room) that states, “Martha Stewart Doesn’t Live Here.” My sister Nina and I were laughing the other day because that’s exactly right – Martha Stewart did not live there; someone even more meticulous (and someone far more financially savvy) lived there. Those of you who know me well know that I take tremendous pride in my organizational skills and my ability to find and recover anything I own in fewer than 2 minutes. I’m telling you: Marge puts me to shame. She has no junk and clutter. She has file folders labeled carefully. Her shirts and sweaters are organized by type and are color-coded. She has separate recipe boxes for various categories of food with the standard alphabetical tabs inside each box, but she also has the recipe cards alphabetized within the tabs for each letter of the alphabet. This made it particularly easy for me to poach the recipe for her amazing lemon squares, which she prepared for me pretty much every time I came to visit. I am the last person who needs convincing here, but the lesson Marge reinforced with all of her systems is that organization is worth the effort; it prevents headaches and provides peace of mind.

Lesson 3: Commitment and Devotion - Most people would stop reading an 800-page book if they weren’t enjoying it after the first 200 pages. Not Marge. She saw it through to the end and even somehow convinced the library to let her renew the book - despite a lengthy waiting list - so that she could finish it. If this is the dedication that Marge showed when she didn’t like something, you can only imagine her level of commitment to the things she really loved.

Marge’s (unwritten) Law of Commitment would tell you that if the Brussels sprouts from Trader Joe’s or Polar Seltzer were on sale, you should buy in bulk. If Merrells are the most comfortable and practical footwear, you should own at least 8 pair in a variety of different colors. If you are lucky enough to find a skilled hair stylist and chiropractor whom you adore, a 90 mile drive to see them really isn’t excessive.

Marge was devoted to these things, but always even more devoted to her people. And because of Marge’s devotion, people reciprocated. For many, many years, my Uncle David and Aunt Jessie generously and compassionately took Marge to doctor’s appointments, picked her up after surgeries, and nursed her in their home until she was ready to go to her own house. Jessie and Marge shared some particularly special times, including a memorable trip to Alaska. They were the definition of loyal and supportive family for each other.

Marge was a dedicated fixture on the sidelines of all our athletic events at Lincoln-Sudbury. After that, she regularly traveled to Conn College to go see Jules’s lacrosse team and drove out to Amherst and back, often mid-week, to sit with Nina and Sylvia in the stands and cheer on my basketball and softball teams. She even found her way to the sidelines of my Senior Night basketball game just two weeks after a double knee-replacement.

Marge showed a deep interest in our lives and our friends and even our friends’ lives. She showed unfailing generosity to her family over the years. She was proud of us; and, as so many of you have commented over the past few days, she was arguably my biggest fan. Through Marge’s devotion to me, I learned what it meant to be a committed and fanatical aunt. When I think about the kind of aunt that I strive to be for my own niece and nephew, whom Marge totally adored, Aunt Marge is and always will be my role model.

Many of you have thanked and recognized me for my devotion to Marge over the years and especially over the past few weeks. Marge also found the strength to thank me on Friday night. The humbling yet obvious take-away for me here is that I wasn’t actually born with some gift or innate ability to be devoted; I had an outstanding teacher. Marge was the one who taught me the devotion that I showed her.

Lesson 5: Resolution - I honestly don’t know whether I would categorize Marge as a good patient or a bad patient; I think you have to be both in order to fight and endure the amount of physical hardships that she experienced. Marge was an outstanding patient in terms of her positive attitude, her admirable fight, and her commitment to physical therapy. Any time that Nina, my mom, or I have had to go through any orthopedic procedures, Marge always reminded us that the surgeon could only do about 50% of the work and that the other 50% of the outcome depended on us doing the physical therapy. She lived by this and did not believe in making any excuses -- not for herself, anyway, but she had no problem blaming Giselle for every single one of Tom Brady’s mishaps.

In other ways, Marge was a maddening patient: driving before she was cleared to do so, falsely assuring the doctors that she had plans in place for support and company in order to avoid being admitted to a post-surgical rehab facility, and saying that she had been resting and elevating all day when in reality she hadn’t sat still for more than an hour.

But she had to keep breaking these rules in order to enjoy living. Her determination to live independently was what drove her and what healed her. When I say that Marge was resolute, I mean that she went to the gym three days a week until mid-November of this year. I mean that she insisted on joining Katie and me at the breakfast table days after her elbow surgery just minutes before admitting to the visiting nurse that her pain level was a 9 on a scale from 1-10. And when my brother-in-law Jim and I went down to Marge’s for a weekend to spread wood chips for her, Marge was absolutely determined to participate. She insisted on suiting up in her dark, terminator-style sunglasses and hauling around a heavy duty leaf blower to “help” us -- which essentially just meant pelting us with wood chips. And Marge was resolute until the end, when she unwaveringly and bravely told her loved ones that it was her time to let go.

This last lesson is the toughest of all, but the message here is for us to be brave and resolute as we say goodbye to Marge, come to terms with her physical absence, rejoice in her lack of pain, appreciate her generous gifts, and honor her by carrying on her inspiring legacies.

Reading by Marge's Niece, Julia Rosenthal

A family member read this poem at services not too long ago for a loved one, and I thought it was just so incredible. It especially spoke to me with Marge’s passing, knowing how she loved the sea. We had many hours at the beach with her and she watched so lovingly as the kids built moats and went crab hunting, excitedly bringing her every single find. This activity included chuckles at the most excited and the eldest of the group: my husband, Jim.

Each time I was headed for a visit, I would call Marge and tell her that I was headed to the cape. And each time, her response was always the same, “If I’m not here, I’m at the beach.”

Yes, Marge, I do believe you are.

Gone From My Sight

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,

spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts

for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.

I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck

of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,

hull and spar as she was when she left my side.

And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"

there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices

ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying...

- Henry Van Dyke