- Date Of Birth: September 5, 1920
- Date Of Death: December 29, 2013
- State: Iowa
Marian Caroline Inbody was born September 5, 1920 to Arthur Reuben Inbody and Sylvia Sydebotham Krutsinger Inbody at the home in Oakley, Iowa, the fourth out of five children.
As was customary in those days, Marian started school in the first grade, not kindergarten or pre-school as is the more recent practice. A precocious child, she took two grades in one year and skipped one grade altogether. After, completing the eighth grade in country school, and since busses were not provided in those days, she moved alone to the home of a family in Chariton where she earned her room and board by cleaning, washing clothes, and babysitting, and on her twelfth birthday began classes at Chariton High School. She graduated near the top of her class in 1936 at the age of fifteen and began two jobs and continued to support herself. She worked in the mornings at the Ford garage keeping books, a skill she had learned in business classes at high school, and worked in the afternoons as a receptionist and clerk for Dr. Robert Anderson.
At eighteen, she met and began dating a local farmer and Iowa State student, Max Wright. This courtship lasted two years until Max graduated from Iowa State in 1940 and in late September, shortly after her twentieth birthday, the two were married in Atlantic, Iowa. Marian later joked that when they returned to the farm, she realized the honeymoon was over when Max asked her to open the gate for him to drive through and close it after he’d gotten through it.
The couple spent the next several years farming the family farm near Derby and socializing often with other local young farming couples in the area, many of whom they met through Phane and Orva Hibbs’ Young Married Farmers’ Organization that held weekly and monthly parties and dances. Marian was always grateful for the help offered to her by other farm wives who taught her a great deal about cooking and canning and gardening and later also offered well-intentioned but little heeded advice on child rearing.
Max died in October of 1965 after a five year battle with the debilitating effects if diabetes, stroke, and amputation.
Marian and Floyd enjoyed many years on the farm near Williamson both employed and retired. Floyd passed away in 2001 and Marian continued living there until she moved to Northridge Assisted Living in 2007, where she made many new friends and renewed old friendships from many years past. Her health declined rapidly in the last two months of 2013 and she passed away peacefully under Hospice care at the Afton Care Center on December 29, 2013.
Marian’s life was spent serving God by serving family, friends, and those in need with little regard to her own needs.
Marian was preceded in death by her siblings, Arthur Inbody, Jr., John Inbody, Vera Gardiner, and Celia Miller, her husbands, Max Wright and Floyd Miller, and step son Ralph Miller. Survivors are Dixie Barlow (Bruce), Gene Wright (Teresa), children and step children Gregory Miller (Mary), Richard Miller (Terri) and step daughter-in-law, Amy Miller and a host of loving nieces and nephews, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Chariton, IA
St.
Chariton, IA
Chariton, IA
