Marion Todres-Masarsky

Playlist Before Service Scarborough Fair (Simon and Garfunkel cover) City of New Orleans (Arlo Guthrie cover) Dem Trisker Rebns Khosid (By Alicia Svigals from the album “Fidl”) Die Gedanken Sind Frei (Pete Seeger Cover) Baym Rebns Sude (By Alicia Svigals from the album “Fidl”) Guantanamera (Pete Seeger cover) God Bless America This Land is Your Land (Woody Guthrie cover) Romanian Fantasy #1 (By Alicia Svigals from the album “Fidl”) Midnight Special The Irish Rover (Dubliners cover) Dona Nobis Pacem Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream Kale-Kale Mazl Tov (By Alicia Svigals from the album “Fidl”) CELEBRATION OF MARION’S LIFE Shekinah, divine presence of Adonai. Please allow Marion to experience the love for her that exists in this room. Amen. There is a traditional Sabbath song that has a melody Marion enjoyed. I don’t have a word-by-word translation for you, but it is an invitation to the angels to come in peace, and for those present to experience peace. It’s not normally done at occasions like this one, but Marion and I always marched to the beat of a different cantor. I will sing to her and you the first verse only, for the simple reason that like most songs, I only know the first verse. Shalom aleichem mal'achei ha-sharet mal'achei Elyon, mi-melech malchei ha-milachim ha-kadosh Baruch Hu. Bo'achem le-shalom mal'achei ha-shalom mal'achei Elyon, mi-melech malchei ha-milachim ha-kadosh Baruch Hu. Well, this was not the plan. The plan was Marion and I live into our 90’s with time to experience a few more things. As the great American philosopher Mike Tyson has said, everybody has a plan until the other guy punches you in the face. I guess reality gave us a pretty good punch in the face this time. In the Presence of Magic I try to be methodical at the chiropractic table. Lots of muscle testing, sensory tests, little palpation tricks. That helps me be a competent chiropractor, but Marion helped me be much more. Imagine my surprise early in our careers when Marion knocked on my adjusting room door, poked her head in and said, “Don’t forget to check his fourth thoracic vertebra. It’s rotated posterior on the right.” She was correct. There was no way she could see that in the visual sense, but I witnessed her doing that too many times to be chance. We call that sort of thing medical intuition when we’re too nervous to call it something else. So, I got to work side-by-side with someone who had the something else that got women burned at the stake in the old days. We’ll call it medical intuition so we don’t scare the horses, but in fact I was in the presence of magic. Resilience Coach Being in the presence of a medical intuitive was not the only way Marion helped me be something more than I previously was. She instinctively knew how to short-circuit an unfortunate tendency I used to have to get frustrated too easily. We were working on a case for publication back in the 1980s. This was a man with a 20-year history of emphysema. I assumed there was little chance of making a significant impact on someone like this, and after a few weeks, I was ready to give up. Marion urged me not to. At his next visit, this man told us he had a dream the previous night in which he blew the spirometer off the scale – that’s a device for measuring breathing capacity. In fact, his reading that day was substantially higher than any previous reading. We ended up publishing that case. Another instance came when our office building collapsed – in 2011 I think it was – and I was ready to toss in the towel. Again, Marion talked sense to me, and today we practice in a building with the best landlord we’ve ever had. Finally, we were editors of a chiropractic textbook. It was a multi-author book, and believe me, organizing clinicians and academics to meet a deadline is like herding cats. When I started making noise about dropping that project, Marion told me, “The show must go on.” We published with Churchill Livingstone – the company that has also published Gray’s Anatomy. I think I’m quite resilient today, but that’s because I’m the product of an excellent resilience coach. Authenticity Life is full of people playing games tiptoeing around everyone with their language. Marion was a very frank authentic person and had no respect for language rated G when the situation called for something a bit stronger. A great example was in the 1980s. Marion became the first woman to be elected to the Board of Directors of the Virginia Chiropractic Association. This was a time when the profession was under a lot of pressure, so the position was important. At the very first meeting, one of the other board members groused, “Well, now that there’s a lady present, we’re going to have to watch our language.” Marion replied, “Yeah, I don’t want to hear that kind of s--t from any of you guys.” Did they hate her for not buying into a phony delicacy of speech? No, they loved it. The board could now relax and get down to business. Sometimes, an entire organization needs an authenticity coach. Cool Trips to Old Stuff Marion was born in Neptune, New Jersey. She always loved lakes, rivers, streams, but especially the ocean. In recent years we would occasionally go hunting for fossils of creatures that once lived in the sea. I could usually find a fossilized shellfish or two, Marion would look at a bit of pebbly rubble and suddenly bend down and pick up a fossilized shark tooth. I got the shellfish, but she got the vertebrate. A true daughter of Neptune. Marion and I became interested in the artifacts left behind by ancient Americans – before the tribes known to history existed. We’re talking about paleoindians = ice age wooly mammoth hunting cavemen. When you combine that with the fossil hunting, I guess we somehow decided to meet the original inhabitants. We never did get down with the cavemen, but we did visit things that were already old when Columbus landed. This March, right before Marion got her cancer diagnosis, we took a trip to the western part of North Carolina, where there is a petroglyph called Judaculla Rock. It’s at least 600 years old, but according to some estimates it’s 1800 years old. Even though we easily found the right town, it was not easy to find the petroglyph. It’s a really strange thing. When people find something ancient or prehistoric in Egypt, India, China, or the Middle East, they make sure every visitor is shown it. Here, people who live walking distance from Judaculla rock had no idea where it was or even that it existed. Finally on the campus of Western Carolina University, we found an older resident who could direct us. At around that time, a student we spoke to before caught up with us, and agreed to join us. This was a young woman getting into a car with a couple of strangers, but she took one look at Marion and decided it was perfectly safe. What’s the attraction of these fossils, petroglyphs, and whatnot? Maybe we were comforted by something older than us! Love From time to time, I’ve been a jerk. I know it’s hard to believe. After all, I’m practically a saint. But it’s true. Did Marion become angry with me? Let me remind you; we’re talking about a Jersey girl. Yes, she got angry. Hot, blazing anger! But I soon realized one thing. Marion’s love was much deeper than her anger. I didn’t always have that depth. I have more of it now. I had a love coach. Tikkun Olam All of you who are her patients, her friends, her relatives know what you have lost. Now you have a better idea of what I have lost, what my profession has lost, what the world has lost. See, you don’t have to be a world historic figure to have a beneficial impact on the world. So, beyond her impact on all of us, Marion supported organizations that do good in the world. In some branches of Judaism, charity and acts of justice are a spiritual discipline called Tikkun Olam – the repair of the world. I can’t list all of Marion’s causes for you, and some of them are causes some of you probably support already. But here’s a brief sample for your consideration: Feeding America, providing food assistance for your fellow Americans in need. https://www.feedingamerica.org/ HIAS, assisting refugees in their efforts to become part of the country we can all call our own. https://hias.org/ Southern Poverty Law Center, opposing racial and religious bigotry. https://www.splcenter.org/ Pets for Vets, helping veterans get past PTSD by providing companion dogs or cats. https://www.petsforvets.com/ Thank you for listening to me carry on about the beautiful person I married. Now that Marion cannot represent herself, I now represent her as well as myself. In my remaining time on earth, I will try to honor her by what I do and who I am. Marion, you have been a blessing to me. May your memory be a blessing for all of us here.

Tributes

Marion Todres-Masarsky

December 15, 1948 - August 1, 2026