Marion L. Commerford

Marion Louise Commerford was born to Mary and Martin Gialusi in South St. Louis, Missouri, in September 1930. She died on New Year’s Day 2018.

A child of Slovenian immigrants, Marion developed a special sensitivity to the challenges of the immigrant experience and the needs of other vulnerable communities.

She met her husband, John, in choir at St. Mary Magdalene Church in South St. Louis. They married at that church in 1953, then spent their early marital years among the Choctaw Tribe in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and the Akimel O'odham of the Gila Tribes in Sacaton, Arizona, while our dad worked in the Public Health Service.

When Marion delivered their first child, they left Arizona for St. Charles. She devoted herself to her children as teacher and playmate, she turned herself into a gourmet, and she applied her exquisite taste to making a beautiful home for her family. She honored her parents’ experience by fighting for farmworker rights, sometimes with a toddler on her hip. She filled her home with friends and there was singing, intellectual and spiritual debate, and always delicious food.

She was a voracious learner who read widely about art, history, and religion. She had a deep intellectual curiosity and became a font of knowledge about literature, style, food, and entertaining. In the 1960s she began studying post-Vatican II Catholicism. Her studies expanded to world religions and meditation, and her search for God was a defining feature of her life.

During her last fifteen years she was beset by a number of frustrating, painful health problems. But she endured it all with grace, good humor, gratitude for the things she still had, and a Kindle with the font turned up to 42. She stayed at the center her loving community.

She leaves behind her daughters, Mary (Stephen) and Kay (Sue), her son, John, grandchildren Calvin and Andrew, and her beloved sister, Justine Eresh. And we all gratefully acknowledge her caregiver and dear friend, Gina Orlando.

In memory of Marion, memorials may be made to Operation Food Search – St. Louis.