The Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk School District and the Bethlehem and Coeymans communities have lost a special volunteer who dedicated her life to serving children, her church and others in need.  Eighty-eight-year old Marion Fross passed away on Saturday, May 3, 2008 with her family at her side, but her legacy of selfless community service lives on.

In 2006 Marion received a Volunteer Award from Albany County Executive Michael Breslin to recognize many years of service to the community and a Senior Lifetime Achievement Award from the Capital District Senior Issues Forum, yet remained humble in spite of a lifetime of accomplishments.  She grew up in Yonkers, New York where her parents provided piano lessons for her and instilled in her a lifetime love of music.  She earned an undergraduate degree in history and Latin at Mount Holyoke College and a graduate degree in history and American Literature from Cornell University after which she and her husband Arthur Fross raised six children.  Once her children were enrolled in elementary school, she began serving the Bethlehem and Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk School Districts as a substitute teacher and did not officially retire until she was 80 years old. 

Marion was involved in countless organizations over a forty-year period, but considered children “her first love.”  For the past eight years Marion was a dedicated volunteer for the Seniors Teaching and Reaching Out to Students (STARS) Program, an intergenerational program that enabled her to continue working with preschool students in her daughter Susan Parker’s classroom at the A.W. Becker Elementary School in Selkirk.  She contributed more than 350 hours of service to the STARS Program during the 2004-05 school year and continued to volunteer until her health declined recently.  Featured in a 2006 Times Union article, she said, “I’ve seen a lot of kids over the years and every time I sit down with them, I try to teach them something new.  It makes you feel good to have a youngster come up and hug you and to know that you’re needed.”

In addition to the STARS Program, Marion was very active in the South Bethlehem United Methodist Church.  She was the Sunday school piano player for more than forty years, a church organist and also held numerous administrative posts at her church.  She traveled twice to Puerto Rico with a church group to help build a church and later redecorate it.  She was a 4-H leader for 21 years, teaching her students to make items for nursing home residents and taking them to visit a local nursing home where she would bring a portable organ to play while the students performed sing-a-longs for the residents. 

Marion explained her tireless volunteerism simply by saying, “I love being able to help others.  It gives me a sense of purpose.”  STARS Program Director Karen Harmon says that Marion “was one of our longest-serving volunteers who helped make the STARS Program the success it is today.  She was one of the most selfless persons I have ever met.  We all should aspire to give back to the community the way she did.”  Marion served as a role model not only for the school children who loved her so, but for the many adults whose lives she touched in our local communities and beyond.