Marjorie (Wood) Parsons

Marjorie Parsons, a resident of Cambridge, died on October 14 at the Miriam Boyd Parlin Hospice Residence in Wayland, Massachusetts, after a long illness.  She was 75.  She was the wife of Charles Parsons, Professor emeritus at Harvard University.

Ms. Parsons was born Marjorie Louise Wood in New York on August 12, 1942, daughter of S. Gordon Wood, an airline pilot, and Miriam F. Wood.  As a baby her parents took her to Brazil, where she remained until she was 13, except for an interval in Connecticut.  The family then moved to Bangkok, but she was in residence there for only one year.  For the next four years she attended French-language boarding schools in Switzerland.  In 1961 she entered Barnard College in New York, from which she graduated in 1965.  She then joined the U. S. Peace Corps and was stationed in two different villages in Turkey.

At the end of her service in 1967, she returned to New York, where she was employed for a year at the School of Architecture at Columbia University and studied philosophy in the evening at New York University.  In 1968 she married Charles Parsons, then a faculty member in philosophy at Columbia.  Their home was in the Columbia neighborhood until 1989, when her husband moved to Harvard.

In addition to rearing her two children, she studied linguistics at the City University of New York from 1975 to 1979.  About 1983 she began working informally with destitute mentally ill patients through soup kitchens.  She continued this work until about 1996, first in New York and then in Boston.  In 1987 she completed an M. Div. at Union Theological Seminary and in 1989 an M. S. S. W. at the Columbia School of Social Work.  From 1996 to 1998 she was director of religious education at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in New London, New Hampshire.  She continued in later years her study of ancient languages and religious texts.

In 1973 the couple bought a house in Springfield, New Hampshire, where the family spent many summers and to which they made many improvements.

During her years in Cambridge, she maintained a garden that was important to her and much appreciated by neighbors.  A confirmed animal lover, she was devoted to her cats and dogs.

She is survived by her husband, her son Jotham of Pittsburgh, her daughter Sylvia of Cambridge, her brother Donald Wood of Los Angeles, her sister Rosalie Bruning of Santa Cruz, California, and her grandchildren Charlotte and Nathaniel Parsons.

A funeral mass will be held in St  Paul Church, Bow & Arrow Streets (Harvard Square) Cambridge on Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 10AM  Relatives and friends kindly invited. A reception will immediately follow in the Robbins Library on the second floor of Emerson Hall, Harvard University. 

In lieu of flowers, contributions are suggested in Marjorie's memory to American Fondouk (americanfondouk.org) or Farm Sanctuary (farm sanctuary.org). 

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