Remembering Marsue
Who could ever forget Marsue?
I first met Marsue (originally named Mary Susan, maybe, or Margaret Susan) right after we had moved to Dallas in 1969. We went to dinner at a prix fixe restaurant on Lovers Lane (I think it was $17 for four courses!) and it was a big deal to get a sitter for Elizabeth and go to a French restaurant!
The occasion was that Marsue’s niece had gotten married and she and new husband, who was a policeman, were spending their honeymoon visiting her Aunt Marsue in Denton. Marsue brought them to Dallas to meet the relatives.Also in attendance were my mother-in-law and Byron’s sister and her husband, Bill.
Bill, the son and grandson of oil men, played lord of the manor, even though my mother-in-law paid. He sent the salad plates back because they weren’t chilled and sent the entree back because the plate wasn’t warmed.
Marsue’s first marriage was when she was a student at the University of Arkansas. She had been Valdictorian of her Little Rock High Schoool class. (Her two older sisters had also been Valdictorians, but they had been in school in Warren, Arkansas - so much smaller schools.) She was very bright.
Marsue pledged Pi Phi, as had her sisters and mother, but somehow she met a serviceman and they secretly eloped. He then was sent to New Mexico on assignment.
A few months later, when the marriage became known, her parents (her father was a judge on the Supreme Court of Arkansas) simply packed her up and put her on the train to “go be an Air Force private’s wife.” Two children later, the marriage broke up. Many years later, Marsue found out that her father had paid her husband to “go away and never come back”. He never did.
Marsue returned with her children to the U of A and received her undergraduate degree, Masters and Doctorate. She moved to Denton as a college professor at then North Texas State, married a music professor who looked like an early Bert Bachrach, reared the children and taught college English.
Divorcing husband #2 after finding him in bed in their house with a student, she continued teaching, which was when I fiirst met her.
She would occasionally come to Dallas and Fort Worth to see relatives, and sometimes bring her mother Miss Tillie to vist her first cousin, my mother-in-law.
We met many of her beaus in Dallas, and she also invited us to Denton to partake of her famous (and inexpensive) lasagna dinners. I always admired her for her open hearted welcome to her friends and noted that even though she really had no disposable inccome, she could invite people over for a convivial and entertaining meal.
For some reason, she decided that I should give her permanents. My own last experience with a permanent was in junior high when my mother’s hairdresser left it on too long and I had the worst hair possible for about three months, untill it could be trimmed off. I haven’t loved my straight hair, but I’ll take it instead of a permananet any day!
Anyway, Marsue would get a permanent kit from the drugstore and I would wind those little rollers in her hair, and we would stay up late, drink some Scotch, smoke and laugh.
She would give me advice:
1. Always take a hostess gift, even if it just a pack of napkins or a candle. It’s the thought that counts.
2. A lady always has a freshly ironed hankerchief in her purse.
3. Reciprocate invitations. Don’t let someone invite you too many times without inviting them back. You don’t have to match a big dinner out or a special occasion like a play or ball game, but you can have them over for lasagna. Also, if someone accepts your hospitality too many times without reciprocating, something is unbalanced in your relationship.
4. Fold your towels in thirds. (I don’t know why this is a rule, but I faithfully fold towels in thirds.)
5. Write the names and dates on the back of pictures - you will forget who that kid is or who was standing by Aunt Katherine. (She was right - I still think I’ll remember.)
After George died (more about him later), we had Marsue come to Dallas to cheer her up and I got down all the unidentified photos from Mae Rene’s house and had her go through and identify them.
Later as Elizabeth grew up and became an unruly teenager, Marsue would invite her to come to Denton on the bus (!) to stay the weekend. What a relief to have a fun, safe and interesting place for Elizabeth to go! She invited Katherine, too, but Katherine resisted after being invited to get naked in the hot tub - and Mary may have gone a couple of times. It was an adventure for them and respite for me.
After my darling sister-in-law Shazie died in a car wreck, Marsue decided to befriend the widower Joe Mike - another first cousin once removed. His daughter Kathy was already in college, Bear was a junior or senior in high school and Frances was 14 or 15. People more unlike than Shazie - laid-back and casual in manner and dress, and Marsue - who still had a Southern idea of meals at the dinner table and getting dressed up - are hard to imagine. But for a brief time, Marsue and Joe Mike were a couple. She came on too strong for Frances, who was appalled and shocked by the forced intimancy of Marsue trying to take Shazie’s place.
Joe Mike was running for district attorney and Marsue was from an important political family. I think she put up signs and helped organize his campaign. He won that election, and she went back to Denton and pulled strings to get Bear into North Texas. He even lived with her for a while, until they couldn’t agree on what comprised proper hygiene and other housekeeping matters. The romance faded.
Marsue’s next adventure was as an exchange teacher in Lodz, Poland. I arranged for her to talk about her trip at the Craig Class and she was fascinating.
When she returned, she met a man who had been a year behind her in high school and they decided to marry. They were both interested in music and the joke at the time was that the music they chose for the ceremony would last longer than the reception. It did last almost longer than the marriage. We became suspicious when the groom asked Byron to help him change his last name to Marsue’s - rather than the usual reverse. It turned out he was trying to escape some very bad debts.
She had already accepted a teaching assignment in California (Pomona?) before the wedding, so he moved into her house while she went off to teach for three months. When she returned, her cats were gone and he became violent in arguments, once even brandishing a kitchen knife. She learned later that he had had her cats put to sleep while telling her that they had just run away.
Next, she availed herself of an early dating service and met an Air Force veteran whose job in the service was to produce the radio music program for the troops. He was not the usual genial type, but seemed steady and reasonably well-off. She gave up her tenured job in Denton and moved with him to Arizona where she used her retirment money and savings to buy a house.
She knew things weren’t going well when she returned from a trip to find that he had moved out with all his furniture.
During that time, she discovered a lump in her breast, and I went out to help hold her hand when she had the biopsy - which fortunately was benign.
She loved Arizona and got a job teaching English to would-be pilots at Embry-Riddle. There she met George, invited him home for lasagna and told him to quit wearing the toupee. George really was a rocket scientist, having worked at NASA. He was a darling dumpling of a man and clearly adored her. They married and were very happy until his death of cancer.
In the meantime, her son graduated from the Air Force Academy, married and had two sons of his own. Her daughter graduated from TWU in dance and went on to marry (in my wedding dress, by the way) and move to the East Coast and she and her husband became dance instructors. They have three or four children.
A couple of years ago, Marsue took up stained glass making and made us several wonderful stained glass crosses, which I treasure. She loved her Episcopal church and was very active in it.
We would see her infrequently as she seldom visited Arkansas (long-time smouldering feuds with her sisters), but we talked every month or so and exchanged emails.
She somehow injured her hand working with the stained glass and ultimately lost a finger to amputation when the infection couldn’t be resolved.
For Christmas I usually sent her an amarillys bulb. On day in early January two years ago, I got a call from a lady who said that she was living in the house at the address I had used, and that she was sorry to tell me that Marsue had died back in the summer. She said that Marsue had gone a cruise and had been dancing, fallen and hit her head. I later learned that she hadn’t died instantly, but had been taken to a shore hospital and died there.
I was shocked that neither of her children or her surviving sister had let us know, but what a way to go!
I used to say that I never needed to do much rebelling or naughty things, because I could always do them vicariously through Marsue. She wasn’t exactly Auntie Mame, or a hippie - she was a law unto herself, and I was lucky to be swept into her orbit. I miss her.
