For
as long as she can remember, Marilyn Gross loved books
and words and poetry. She still enjoys reciting with
friends many poems from even her elementary school
years, especially the Edward Lear poem “The Quangle
Wangle’s Hat” from her elementary school
graduation. She does crosswords and word puzzles of
all kinds, always fascinated by the interplay of words.
In 1991, Marilyn became one of the original members
of the newly formed Forgotten Voices poetry group
at the Indian Valley Public Library, led by Joanne
Leva. Although she came to listen and revel in the
poetry, within a few months, with Joanne’s encouragement,
she found herself also writing poetry. She recently
celebrated with the other members of Forgotten Voices
as it reached its 14th birthday. She writes free verse
in various styles but haiku remains her favorite form
and its rhythms often crop up as she writes. Marilyn
has done poetry readings for the Montgomery Theater
Project in Souderton, for the Main Street Theater
Poetry in the Gallery in Quakertown, and for Poetry
Forus at Beaver College, now Arcadia University. She
has won awards for her poetry from the Christian Writers
Workshop and Quakertown Alive!’s Upper Bucks
Day of the Arts. She participated in Poet Laureate
Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project, reciting
her favorite poem, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The
Raven.”
Marilyn taught elementary and special education physically
handicapped children for six years at the Widener
Memorial School in Philadelphia. For twenty-five years
she taught in Hebrew schools and Sunday schools. Marilyn
grew up and went through school in Philadelphia, graduated
from Philadelphia High School for Girls and from Temple
University with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s
degree in elementary and special education. At Temple
University she met her husband Ronald. They live in
Telford, where Marilyn now considers herself a country
girl. They have an insurance agency in Hatfield, where
she believes that she still has a teaching role in
helping their clients understand insurance and their
policies.
Marilyn fostered a love of books in their three children,
David, Karen and Janet, who are now married to Jennifer,
David and Todd, respectively, and she is finding even
more fun in passing that love of books on to her granddaughters,
Sarah and Rebekah. But her love of writing and books
does not stop there. For the last ten years Marilyn
has been involved in memoir-writing, and for the last
eight years has led a weekly group at the Senior Adult
Activity Center of
Indian Valley, teaching and encouraging others to
write their memoirs. She is a firm believer that everyone
has stories to tell and interesting memories and important
life lessons to pass on. She finds it greatly rewarding
to nurture people of all levels of writing ability
to recall, set down and compile in their own words
and voices, and in their own styles, the stories of
their lives. She has learned much over the years from
the members of her group and has become a better writer
because of them. Though most of their writing is prose,
they have also explored poetry as an important way
to write memoirs.
Reviewing her own memories and stories and her writing
of prose and poetry have led her to an interest in
genealogy as a logical extension of another way to
set down and save more of her family’s life to
pass on to her children and grandchildren. Meanwhile,
Marilyn continues to write and to advise her memoirs
groups to “put pen to paper and the words will
come.” And each week she finds the stories they
write remarkable. |
