rockwellmarsh

The Loose Leaves Project

by roscoe00 | Dec 26, 2017 | Theron Ludlow Marsh

Loose Leaves was an invention of my father Theron “Curly” Marsh, who, once he retired, starting writing the Marsh family newsletter. It wasn’t just a newsletter it was a well researched set of documents that contained our genealogy, chronicled the family exploits and presented much folklore that went well beyond just our immediate family. Indeed there was news, information and background on the extended families that Dad accumulated through marriage. When all was said and done there might have been hundreds of people in various families that were connected to Loose Leaves in one way or another.

This was back in 1977 or so and he carried on with it for about 25 years of annual issues of fifty or more pages each, personally typed on an old typewriter with many pictures, cut and pasted, poems and writings of ancestors and other memorabilia. Dad died in 2007 and I had hoped to continue the the plan of issuing a new Loose Leaves every year as he did. Unfortunately life gets in the way and I published only one such issue – just after his passing – which dealt most with his life and youth and contained many pictures which have been handed down through they years.

While I could never hope to match the loving care he gave Loose Leaves over that many years, I have always wanted to continue the effort in one form or another. Enter the internet, computers, Facebook and websites. Dad had none of these modern tools with which to generate the volume pages that he did. His was an entirely manual effort and, when visiting him, I often found him in his home office with pages spread around, scraps of cut up paper, Elmer’s glue everywhere, extra photos and copies that would be thrown out. And off to one corner of the room there was a freshly purchases laptop computer, hooked up to Compuserve, which he never learned how to use. It was hunt and peck from A to Z.

So now that I have allowed a few years to pass, I have decided that the technology is sufficiently advanced to enable me to efficiently create voluminous Loose Leaves style content and share it with the world that has been patiently waiting. I do have much to share as there are so many archives to publish and anecdotes to retell. My only problem has been deciding where to draw the line. Dad never drew the line. If he married someone, he would write about the whole new family. If someone in the whole new family got married, he would write about them. Thus I would think the geometric progression of all this would propagate to infinity and everyone would already know about Loose Leaves. Well, I guess we will find out!!

Dad

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Curly Marsh in His Own Words

by roscoe00 | Dec 26, 2017 | Theron Ludlow Marsh

Theron L. Marsh was born on December 9, 1911 in Madison, NJ to parents Spencer S. and Edith Marsh. He graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover MA in 1929 and from Princeton University in 1933. He joined the National Newark & Essex Banking company in 1934 where he spent his active years, retiring as Chairman of the Board of the bank’s holding company in 1976.

He was drafted into the army in 1941 and attend officer training school continuing as a teacher of tactics and gunnery. He married Virginia Drewry and they had 2 daughters, Judith Fay and Cynthia Lee, and in 1953 a son, Rockwell Drewry.

In 1945 Mr. Marsh left the army as a Major, returning to the bank as an assistant cashier. In the years that followed he rose through the ranks as the bank expanded by becoming a bank holding company – Midlantic Banks Inc. – so as to own banks in New Jersey and other states. Mr. Marsh was active in civic affairs having served as President of the Welfare Foundation of Newark, the Chamber of Commerce and the Robert Treat Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He also served as a director of Kidde Inc.

Mr. Marsh married Mavis Conklin in 1973 who brought 5 children into the Marsh family as step children. Mavis died in 1993, and Mr. Marsh married Marry Louise Vogel who added three more step children.

When Mr. Marsh retired he spent many years as a volunteer for the Morristown Memorial Hospital. He was also active in the alumni affairs at Princeton as president of the class of 1933 He was an avid sailor, having owned the Dickerson 41′ Angelica and golfer, belonging to Somerset Hills Country Club in New Jersey and Hole in the Wall Golf Club in Naples Florida.

He is survived by his three children and four grandchildren.

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