Marion Kellogg, local conscience

Along with volunteering in the school, Stowe Free Library was immensely important to her. She worked hard in the movement to transform the outdated village school into the library and Helen Day Art Center and was an effective, longtime library volunteer and trustee.

Marion quickly enlisted me in working for Planned Parenthood in Lamoille County. She was on the organization’s Vermont-New Hampshire board and was instrumental in gathering a group of women to organize the opening of a clinic in Morrisville. Local doctors contributed both office and medical services two evenings a month; we volunteers provided all ancillary services. We also worked with local schools and youth-at-risk groups. It was a tight-knit, committed and loving group.

The clinic’s instant success morphed in the later ’70s into the full, professionally staffed Planned Parenthood office we have today in Hyde Park.

She was our community conscience. In the weeks prior to town meeting, her letters to the editor would appear, urging us to be diligent in attendance and voting. Passionate always about her causes, she would rise on the floor on meeting day to champion her issue, speaking so fast she would get lost in her sentences. She, and we, would chuckle until she found words again.

Environmentally, Marion was ahead of us all. For years, she urged us by letter and example to fight invasive loosestrife, even as it was still being sold for landscaping by commercial nurseries. She was aware of, and wrote about, Japanese knotweed and its deadly, implacable menace long before most of us knew anything about the plant.

She was so right — it is everywhere, and impossible to eradicate.

Marion, Franklin and their four adored daughters have lived lightly on the land. Their farm on Brush Hill has always had a milk cow, an enormous garden, a piglet or calf for the freezer. Helen Beckerhoff remembers Marion leaving the post office on a spring morning with a peeping box of newly hatched chicks in her arms. She would turn them loose in the kitchen, with the wood stove cranked up, and family and friends would high-step around them until they were hardy enough for the move to the barn.

It has been a home centered on family and friends. Marion’s example is a thankful and poignant reminder of a life well lived in this increasingly hectic and fragmented world. Bless you, Marion.

Worthwhile raffle

How can you turn down a chance to do good and win big? Who doesn’t want to spend a measly $25 and have six chances to win gift certificates to one of the area’s great restaurants — Michael’s on the Hill, Plate, Harrison’s, Gracie’s, Trattoria La Festa, The Whip, Commodores Inn and Trapps are just some of the possibilities — or to buy some coveted item from a long and varied list of specialty shops in Stowe?

While you are enjoying your newly won booty, you can thank the Friends of Stowe Free Library, who are sponsoring the raffle. The Friends do a great job supporting our library. Do you know that the organization supplements the town budget with a major contribution every year? The Friends also provide a variety of enrichment programs, including children’s story hours and summer reading programs, evening speakers, and adding to the DVD and audio book collections.

The winning ticket will be drawn May 7 at the conclusion of the Friends of Stowe Free Library annual meeting. All are welcome at the meeting (4 p.m. at the library; former Yankee Magazine editor Jud Hale will be talking about The Old Farmer’s Almanac) but you do not have to be present to win. Tickets are available at the library, $5 each, 6 for $25, 8 for $32.