ROTTERDAM Fundraiser to honor teacher, mentor BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter
Marie Marshall had a presence that seemed to lift everyone around her. The 49-year-old Rotterdam woman also had a knack for helping troubled youth — children who seemed almost beyond help. Marshall, a pottery teacher at the Rotterdam Boys and Girls Club, would take them under her tutelage and help bring out the best they had to offer. “She’s been a big mentor to a lot of kids in the community,” said Bruce Blinn-Knapp, a close friend of Marshall’s who knew her since high school. “She was always the one to start working with them and get them on the right track.” Marshall died Thursday after a nearly two-year battle with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. She left behind a husband and teenage son who are now struggling to contend with the medical bills that piled up during her treatment. Friends in September had started planning a benefit concert to help the Marshall family contend with the financial strain, and scheduled the event for Sunday afternoon at the Boys and Girls Club, where she worked for six years. When she died last week, they decided to go ahead with the event to honor her memory. “There’s an awful lot of love coming out for her in the community,” Blinn-Knapp said following Marshall’s funeral Monday. Marshall was first diagnosed with an advanced case of breast cancer in the spring of 2008 and underwent extensive chemotherapy. Her doctors initially thought she had beaten the disease, even declaring that she was cancer-free around the Christmas holiday. But the good news was tempered by Marshall’s mother, Jean Flowers, being diagnosed with lung cancer. And then by the spring, Marshall’s own cancer had returned in force. ........................>>>>.....................>>>>...............................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00903&AppName=1
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