Phyllis Anne Rakita Marx
April 3, 1941 – February 5, 2013
Phyllis Anne Rakita Marx passed away Feb. 5, 2013 with Gary – her best friend for 53 years in a troubled, but also joyous, world – and sons Josh and Ben at her side. The latter’s spouses Stacey and Cori and grandchildren Sallie, Nate, Julien and Simon and brother and sister-in-law Jerry and Karen nearby in spirit.
When her cancer that had first appeared in 1984 reappeared in late 1999, her life expectancy was a year or two at most. Having already lived a full and fortunate life, she told a friend that her greatest sadness was that she would be unable to know her grandchildren and see them develop. Yet with an amazing, indeed astounding, will to live, grace, humor and tolerance for the deranging side-effects of so many treatments, stoicism accompanied by a muted optimism; the exemplary care from Swedish Hospital; and the support of dear friends and family, she beat the odds. Her doctor of 17 years said, “she was a once in a lifetime kind of person. The way she handled her illness was unbelievable.” More than a survivor, she was a transcender.
During the next 14 years she was privileged to watch her grandchildren grow and to impart some of her wisdom, values, aesthetic sensibility, style and abundance of love to them and to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary last August. She also took great pleasure in the stunning gardens done for clients and friends, and in her own restored farm house on Bainbridge Island, where she converted a barren cow pasture into a stunningly beautiful garden – keeping a careful record of the more than 75 trees and richly colored perennial beds she planted, while communing with her cats and ducks and itinerant deer.
Like the Northwest trees she came to love, she was strong, fresh, tall, yet down to earth and direct, with little subterfuge. Her directness – as both honesty and providing clear orders, sometimes displeased. She could be impatient and dogmatic, giving vent to strong feelings before tempered analysis. But she was always refreshing, honest, lively and fun.
She was born in Milwaukee on April 3, 1941 and moved with her family to Tucson in 1946. She attended the University of Arizona, the University of California at Berkeley, Boston University and The Radcliffe Institute, receiving degrees in psychology, school psychology and landscape design.
A theme in her life was the happiness of pursuit in which the process and the journey, the planting and the nurturing were what mattered and she took pleasure in the small things in life. She had a variety of paid and volunteer work experiences. In rough chronological order these involved – social and historical research, editor, social welfare, family planning at Planned Parenthood and the Florence Crittenden Home for Little Wanderers in Boston; co-founder of Warm Lines – a still thriving parent’s resource and support group in Newton, MA; marine biology docent, Sunday school teacher, and library volunteer.
While she engaged in the above with her enormous enthusiasm and intelligence, her true avocation involved landscape and garden design. She had a landscape design business, taught courses in perennial design and did perennial and plant research at the Harvard School of Graduate Design and the Arnold Arboretum and was a “plant person”. She volunteered at an orchid nursery (at one point she had more than 100 orchids) and she took intense and immense pleasure in their extreme variety, beauty and conditions of growth.
The number of women she was the best friend to is a logical impossibility and the women’s group she started lasted until she left New England. She was a voracious reader of fiction, historical novels and the New Yorker, lover of classical music, opera, Indian jewelry and the Sonoran Desert, cat aficionado and sometime brush stroke painter. She was an inquisitive and creative cook – always looking for new recipes and ingredients. Her college interest in the art of India led to an equal interest in East Indian (and later Asian more generally) cooking. Among the condolence messages her family received, some commented on particular Indian and Mexican dinner parties that began in the 1960s. She loved to share her latest recipes, as well as those from her mother and grandmother.
Her major residences were in Cambridge, Belmont and Newton, MA 1967-1992; Boulder, CO 1992-1996 and Bainbridge Island from 1996. She lived for shorter periods in Orinda, Aix-en-Provence, London, Leuven, Vienna, Santa Barbara, La Jolla, Stanford, Portola Valley and Scottsdale. In 1964-65 before the concrete of adult and family life set, she and Gary spent a year traveling around the world and she had a strong interest in travel and other cultures. Among the high points of a travel filled life was a 12-day family trip down the Colorado River.
As she lay in her hospital bed several days from death, she requested that some just arrived flowers be brought to her so she could touch them and she then asked that a plant near her bed be turned a bit so she could see it from a different angle. A line from the poet Gibran perfectly captures her verve, spirit and exquisite sensitivity, “in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”
Our mourning for what has gone mingles with our joy for what has been.
A park bench and a Big Leaf Maple at Port Blakely will be dedicated in her honor. Donations can be made in honor of Phyllis to the Bainbridge Island Library: www.bainbridgepubliclibrary.org/make-a-donation.aspx.
TRIBUTE Paid Notice
