I will always think of fancy-looking, amazing-tasting peas when I think of Marcia Spees. Her garden was one of many on the garden tour years ago, and I’ll never forget that she let our boys pick her peas to their hearts’ content because they were drawn to her fantastic legumes.
Marcia’s beautiful artwork was displayed in the library last October, and a friend happened to mention that I “have to learn more about her – she’s fascinating.” So here you go – if you haven’t already, meet Marcia Spees…
1. Marcia is the eldest of ten siblings in an exuberant blended family.
2. She grew up in Seattle and Anchorage with summers on Whidbey Island. Come Labor Day, “I never wanted to return to the city and vowed at an early age that I would always be an island girl. Here I am.”
3. She has dimples on her shoulders.
4. She and her ever-loving and supportive husband, George, have four grown children and eleven grandkids.
5. Marcia was a ten-year Girl Scout and achieved the rank of First Class, which, at the time, was the equivalent of the Boy Scout’s Eagle Scout.
6. In third grade she performed original songs on local Seattle kids’ TV shows: The Stan Boresen Show’s “King’s Klubhouse” and Don McCune’s “Captain Puget.”
7. Marcia has backpacked throughout the Olympics and hiked Mt. Rainier’s Wonderland Trail. She once hiked the High Sierras out of Yosemite. Four days in, a pack of bears ransacked their food cache, leaving the patrol of seven high school girls with little food. This circumstance prompted Marcia to corner a rattlesnake and cut off its head with her Girl Scout knife. It tasted like chicken.
8. She has a vast repertoire (kazoo and uke accompaniment) of old-timey campfire songs with a particular emphasis on cowboy laments.
9. In the seventies, Marcia conducted Lamaze Childbirth Preparation classes on Orcas and has attended several births.
10. It’s kind of quirky, but she has often been approached for “person on the street” interviews by TV crews.
11. In high school, Marcia’s Scout troop of six girls refurbished a UW library van and embarked upon a cross-country trip to the New York World’s Fair. That’s another story, but suffice it to say that it culminated with a luncheon in the exclusive DC Senate Dining Room, eating bean soup next to Senator Robert Kennedy.
12. And speaking of brushes with greatness: Lee Meriwether, Miss America 1955, was in the next compartment on a train trip to California. Miss America gave Marcia a rose from her bouquet. Marcia sat next to Fess Parker at breakfast at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Art Linkletter was on a flight with her from LA to Palm Springs. (He wasn’t very nice!) At age thirteen, she danced the twist with Caesar Romero at the Ranch Club in Palm Springs at Easter brunch. (For you youngsters – these were once famous people.) Oh – and Joan Baez.
13. She irons her pillowcases and spritzes them with lavender water (but not the sheets!).
14. Her first steps were taken on her first birthday aboard a DC prop flight from Seattle to Anchorage (before jet planes). It was a six- or eight-hour flight, but she can’t remember exactly because she was only one year old.
15. She was First Cello in the Seattle Youth Orchestra in 1959.
16. As a student living in Vienna, Austria, in 1967, Marcia saw Rudolf Nureyev dance in Swan Lake at the Vienna Opera House. “It was standing-room only, and, as students, we camped out all night the night before the performance in the colonnade of the Opera House so as not to lose our place in the queue. Our numbers were checked every hour, and, of course, we were exhausted by show time. But the tickets cost only 25 cents.”
17. For about the last 30 years, Marcia has kept a log of people locally and near to her who have died. You may recognize many names. She calls it her “Death Book.” Some people don’t like that title, so call it what you will; but the purpose is to never forget those who have once been with us and are now gone.
18. In the 60s and 70s, Marcia managed Doe Bay Resort, which her Dad then owned. As an adherent of the “back to the land” movement towards self-sufficiency, she tended an organic garden and kept goats, chickens, and ducks. One day, her idyllic island vision was shattered, sadly, when her pet duck, Gretchen, choked to death on a slug right outside her kitchen window.
Click here to read the rest on my column on theOrcasonian.com…
Photos provided by Marcia Spees
