Leta Eileen Currie Marshall died from cardiac arrest while walking back from a friend’s home at 10 a.m. on Feb. 18, 2009, an early spring day.
A long-time resident of Lopez Island, Marshall is survived by her husband, Stewart Marshall, and daughter Wendy.
Marshall was known for her reporting in the Islands’ Weekly and her beautiful singing voice as a member of Lopez Sound. She was also active in Grace Church and her writers group.
From 1983 until 2002, Marshall was an assistant and later a full-time writer at the Islands’ Weekly, using typesetting equipment and wax to get the paper out every week, before the days of computer software that could align a paragraph with a couple of keystrokes.
For more than 10 years her writing sustained the paper and gave it her particular flavor of dry wit that Lopez Islanders came to love.
Marshall began working for the local Lopez paper, known back then as the Shopper, in 1983. Owned by Steve Hill, the paper was just coming into existence. It had formerly been Island Graphics, a print shop. Hill hired Marshall as a bookkeeper and to perform office administration, and she ran the typesetting machine before Apple computers came out.
“Leta had a real love and knack for the typesetting and paste-up. The final product came out of the machine on paper film back then, and she would cut and paste the artwork physically onto the page,” said Hill.
According to Hill, by 1985 the Weekly had gone county-wide and was competing with other papers, such as the Islands’ Sounder and the San Juan Journal. Marshall began writing for the Weekly in 1997.
“We needed to have intellectual content in the paper. We were moving away from only advertising and pictures. We wanted to focus on the softer side of life, and so Leta interviewed people and brought out why people moved here, and their stories. She was a wonderful person to work with. She made excellent use of her time, as time was a very precious commodity to her. She was very connected to the island through her music and her writing, which got better and better.”
Marshall went freelance after Hill sold the Weekly to Sound Publishing in 2000. The company also owns the Sounder and the Journal.
Hill said, “I still worked at the paper from 2000 to 2003, and Leta began doing more and more freelance work and less office and administrative work. She could focus on her interviewing and writing skills more effectively as a freelancer.”
But Leta began singing more, spending more time with her child, and working more for her church. Gradually she cut back on the amount of writing she was doing for the Weekly, but she still contributed semi-regularly.
What many people do not know about Marshall was her bout with Hodgkin’s lymphoma when she was 12 years old. Marshall was born on April 20, 1956 in Port Arthur, Texas. It was the radiation she received from the early treatments for cancer that damaged her heart.
Marshall wrote a huge variety of stories for the paper and she rarely wrote about herself. But this piece she wrote about the M. D. Anderson Clinic carries her flavor, and adds insight into her life.
“I was at M. D. Anderson Hospital in 1968 with Hodgkin’s disease when I was 12 years old. How different things were then – how clinical, how isolated! No summer camps, no video games, just a lot of very sick kids fighting for life and a lot of very scared parents. I underwent radiation and after years of checkups, was declared ‘in remission.’ In my mind, that meant ‘well’! When I look back on myself as that terrified girl, wracked by nausea and enduring endless needles and institutional food, I know what got me through was my mother by my side, giving me the will and the belief to get better, the friends I made and the caring people who surrounded me. Because of that experience I learned early what’s important, what life and love, courage and faith are all about, and how to face life head on, to live joyfully in the present and the value of a sense of humor.”
A memorial service is being held Sunday, March 8, 4:00 p.m. at the Lopez Community Center.
