By: Mardena Michelson

Mary Lou Marshall describes herself as “just a plain old lady, nothing special about me.”

She must be kidding.

Almost 93, she has raised three well educated, successful children, held responsible positions in some of Hartford City’s flagship businesses (Fulton Glass, Overhead Door, 3M) and been an active member of the community.  

Her mantra? “Learning is fun.” Curious and energetic, she has taken classes in everything from HTML to car repair, researched her genealogy in the Mormon Family History Library in Utah, and traveled the world—often on foot. 

She once flew to Australia after breaking her wrist in the Dallas Fort-Worth Airport, waiting until she got to Alice Springs in the Australian Outback to have it fully casted. “Stubborn” is a word she uses to describe herself: “If I make up my mind to do something, get out of my way.”

“I’m the one who pushed computers at work,” she says, referring to her role in computerizing the Maintenance Storeroom at 3M in the l980s. “It’s the coming thing,” she told co-workers who resisted the change. “You have to do it whether you want to or not.”  

Unlike many older people, she loves new technology. When home computers became available, she “had to have one.” She laughs when she recalls building her first computer with the help of her children, using a kit she ordered from Edmonds Scientific Catalog. Made of “plastic pieces and rubber bands,” it could do a few calculations but “that was about it.” Later she bought a Franklin computer that required two floppy disks for storage; from there she graduated to an Acer with a 10-megabyte hard drive and has continued to upgrade her computer every few years.

Once on the computer, she began taking classes. A basic programming course at Taylor University taught her “what was going on inside the computer,” essential information for mastering new programs. Over the years, she took multiple courses at Ball State and Ivy Tech.

She wrote the code for the Amapola Gallery website in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when serving as webmaster, as well as for the first website she built for her walking club. “That was fascinating.  I would just sit there and smile,” she recalls. Later she built three other web sites for various organization using Dream Weaver. 

Her curiosity extends beyond computers to woodworking, upholstery, pattern design, and car repair. She can tune up an engine, build a bookcase, upholster a chair. When her daughters were young, she made most of their clothes as well as her own.

Mary Lou’s “can do” attitude is, in part, a result of her upbringing. Shortly after the family moved to a farm outside of Hartford City when she was 9 years old, her father died. She credits her mother for the family’s survival during hard times. “She raised all of our food. She sold cream and hogs. I don’t know how she did it.” 

With no man in the house, Mary Lou and her four siblings were expected to help: “If something needed fixed, we had to fix it. Probably why I take a lot of classes.”

Although Mary Lou has deep roots in Blackford County—her family came here from Ohio in 1884—and has lived here all her life, she admits to having “a bit of wanderlust” and has broadened her horizons through travel. “You can live in a small town and experience the world too.”

The Marshall family traveled extensively throughout the United States. Each summer, they asked themselves, “Are we going to buy a new sofa or go on vacation.” The vacation always won.  

By the time the children were grown, they had swum in the Atlantic and the Pacific and seen most of what lay between. Her son Tom, born in August, once remarked that he had “spent most of his birthdays in a tent.”  

After she retired, Mary Lou began to combine travel with one of her favorite activities: walking.  In l989, when she was 61, she joined her first walking club. Since then, she has done a 10K walk in every state and taken several walking trips abroad.

A brochure advertising an 8-country walking trip to Europe prompted her to say to her friend Helen McCollum: “Let’s just go do this.” And they did.  

One of her favorite trips, Walking the Mediterranean Isles, allowed her to visit “amazing archeological sites, to learn as well as walk.” She fondly recalls having lunch in a Greek village and seeing donkeys and 40-year-old tractors working the land as jet planes flew overhead.  

Her greatest accomplishment? That’s easy: “Raising three children who have good jobs and are taking care of their children and are happy doing it.” She emphasized education, hard work, and personal responsibility. It was never “If they went to college, but when.” She is glad they grew up “to be their own people.” 

A widow since l998 when her husband of over 50 years, Bob, passed away, Mary Lou is thankful she is “not one of those people who needs to have someone around all of the time.” Although this year she had to cancel the annual road trip she takes with a friend, she refuses to let the pandemic diminish her joy in learning and doing. 

An avid reader since childhood, she checks out books “on all sorts of a subjects” to read on her Kindle, maintains two websites, and looks forward to the day she can resume her exercise classes and get back on the road. She already has a destination in mind—and, no doubt, a list of classes she wants to take once things return to normal.  

“Plain old lady”? No way.

Forever curious and always on the move, Mary Lou Marshall is a hometown treasure.