Inspiration from an Obituary, and Then...

My neighborhood still has a community newspaper, and that paper still has obituaries that are not just paid placements. Today I read one about a woman named Marion Watson, who died in late March at the age of 97.

Her mother, we are told, worked as a 19-year-old on the political campaign of Jeanette Rankin, the first woman to hold a federal office in the U.S.—"an experience that no doubt influenced Marion's own life choices."

Marion graduated from high school just as the U.S. was entering World War II and she became a code-breaker, ending with the rank of sergeant.

After the war, she went to the University of Minnesota for theater, met her husband (Harold Watson), and had three children. By the early 1960s she was working at KUOM, the public radio station at the University (then called WLB and now Radio K). Meanwhile,

She was a strong advocate for civil rights, pioneering programming for American Indians, Hispanics, African-Americans, and women. She became program director and station manager in 1969, on of only three female public radio managers in the country at the time and the only one at a Big Ten school

Marion was active in the civil rights movement. She served as legislative chair for the League of Women Voters of Minnesota, legislative co-chairwoman of the Minnesota Council for Civil and Human Rights, president of the St. Paul YWCA and sat on the Minnesota Indian Affairs Commission and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's citizens board.

She wrote two books, "Indians in Minnesota" and "Women in the Labor Force." ... She retired from the U at the age of 70 and spent her golden years participating in the League of Women Voters...

Marion Watson was a model member of our world who I wish I had known about while she was alive. Her story is inspiring.

The one thing her obituary didn't tell me, however, is what her family name was for the first 24 years of her life.

Isn't it odd for an obituary to not include a woman's name from before she was married? And given her mother's supposed importance in Marion's life, it also seems odd that her mother's first or last name wasn't there at all.

These omissions were so jarring that they distracted me from Marion's incredible life. That's a disservice to her, and it makes me sad.