Marion Franklin
June 20, 1943 – April 5, 2024
Gathering of Remembrance
11:00 a.m. Saturday June 1st, 2024
Little Trinity Church
All Welcome
My twenty-five year journey as Executive Director of IMAGO has been an enlivening and enriching experience. It has brought into my life opportunities, discoveries, and most importantly people, far beyond what I could have asked or imagined. The greatest gift for me on this journey has been the companionship, support and wisdom of my wife Marion. In so many ways she contributed to shaping the character and ethos of IMAGO.
Marion was best known for the food she so carefully and loving prepared for scores of IMAGO events and hundreds of people over the years. These include public events as well as soirees in our home. It has become standard to speak of IMAGO events always including “time at table”. At the public events, after an evening of fine art presentation where we sat side by side enjoying visual art, music, poetry drama or dance, the final act of the evening was the opportunity for face to face conversation while enjoying the pleasures of good food and engaging together about the shared experience of the evening. The more intimate soirees were times when inspiring conversations would take place, new friendships formed and we got to hear from an artist about their work.
It is impossible to measure the benefits of those times at table, meeting old friends, making new friends, meeting the artists and simply giving thanks for the overflow of creativity that has been experienced together. Such a setting is fertile ground for the work of the Spirit and for inspiring gratitude to God for the gifts of imagination and creativity.
Marion set the stage for facilitating these enriching and pleasurable encounters that have served to make IMAGO evenings so memorable. Quietly behind the scenes she devoted herself to a practice that has carried her care and love into the lives of hundreds who have attended IMAGO events over the past 25 years. Her contribution is not measurable but its impact is deeply felt and well known. Marion consistently gave of herself in the exercise of the biblical virtue of hospitality. The gesture of making room for others, welcoming friend and stranger and giving to all the sense that they belong and are loved.
Thank you Marion, your loving presence has been deeply significant in making IMAGO what it is today.
