Throughout the 1950s, ’60s, and
’70s, as Earl Bodine’s Unit 16 school bus crawled down
the Old Jacksonville Road toward the Sangamon-Morgan county line,
he always stopped at Marjorie and Woodrow Marr’s house to
pick up a child, or two, or three. To a casual observer, this stop
meant little, but to the children who boarded that bus it meant
everything — for these were the foster children Marjorie had
plucked from some the most difficult circumstances of abuse and
neglect imaginable.
In those days, if you lived in Jim Town, just
west of Berlin, you were familiar with the hum of Marjorie’s
Volkswagen as she cruised down the road on her way to save another
juvenile in trouble or to meet with another legislator to craft
legislation to protect children. For Marjorie, giving her time and
effort on the job went beyond going to the office or to a meeting;
for her it also meant bringing those children into her home. Some
stays were temporary, some more permanent, but all were necessary.
She took them in and changed their lives in
the most positive ways. She enrolled them in school and got them on
track and each, on leaving, was ready to meet the world head-on.
She and Woodrow, working together, provided security and a safety
net for each of these children. There was something deep down in
Marjorie and Woodrow Marr that would not allow them to let these
children remain in those terrible places. When others did not,
could not, or would not get involved, Marjorie would simply put
them in the car and bring them to the farm, where they stayed until
whatever they needed in legal or human rights was tended to.
Something in them would not allow them to give up on these children
as others had, for Marjorie and Woodrow didn’t give up on
anyone.
My earliest memory of Marjorie is from the
early ’50s in the Berlin Grade School, where the adults from
the town and surrounding area used to gather for square dances on
Saturday night. With the desks shoved to the corners,
Marjorie’s son, Donnie, would call the square, and Marjorie,
true to her ways, would organize a kids’ circle to teach them
the reel. How could we have known that her life’s mission was
being formulated in those early days of work in the University
Extension Service in which she organized 4-H Clubs and lots of
other activities, all involving children?
Marjorie did not carry the educational credentials
so often mandated for such careers these days, but she was truly wise
in the understanding of kids and how to help them. She chose to do
something about such problems as juvenile delinquency, abuse, and
neglect, not just read about them in the newspaper and leave the work
to others. She let common sense guide her and her energy and drive
sustain her through all the long days of her journey. She had the
uncanny ability to converse with senators and laymen, adults and
children, the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate, and
she knew what to say to each to meet the situation.
As I stood in the back of Island Grove
Methodist Church the other day and watched the mourners file out, I
saw so many of the children Marjorie had helped. Though her family
was deeply affected by her passing, these children whom she had
taken into her care were, I think, the saddest, for they are the
ones who will forever know that they were truly saved by this
friend who had served as both their mother and advocate.
In 1988, Marjorie received the Copley First
Citizen Award, and, on a Saturday morning just after that, a
neighbor stopped me in front the New Berlin post office to ask me
just what Marjorie had done to deserve such an award. I asked him
whether he had a couple of hours to spare, because it would take
that long just to hit the highlights of her life and what she had
accomplished in it.
So I am saddened at the passing of a good
friend and a true humanitarian and would indeed find myself
neglectful if I did not take the time to write these few lines to
remind this community of the passion she carried for helping others
in this world.
This article appears in Aug 11-17, 2005.
