Dodgeville – Marcia Jean Kinder Geer died on Sunday, December 24, 2017 at Bloomfield Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center.

Marcia was born in Kalamazoo, MI on January 13, 1931 and was the daughter of Bern Benton and Florence (Rothman) Kinder. Her formative years were lived in Bloomington, IL where she attended Walker School, a one room school near Bloomington, and University High School in Normal, IL. She attended Illinois State University and transferred to Southeast Missouri State University when her family moved to Salem, MO. She transferred again to Drury College in Springfield, MO where she began a course of study leading to a career as a religious education director. It was at Drury where she met her husband to be, Boyd.

Upon the death of her father, she returned to Salem where she worked at several jobs before being hired to teach at Dry Forks School, a one room country school near Salem. In the following years she taught at Salem Elementary School and at Langley School, a country school in the Taylorville, IL school district where she taught 3rd and 4th grades. At this time she reconnected with Boyd and they were married on February 2, 1957.

Her son Gary was born in Taylorville and daughter Barbara was born in Beaver Dam, WI. The family moved to Madison in 1963. In each of the places where they lived in these years, Marcia devoted her energy to raising her children and volunteering as a church school teacher and supervisor at various churches to which they belonged. In 1970 she and Boyd adopted a second daughter, five year old Lynette. As the children matured, Marcia sought further opportunity to use her considerable talents and accepted a job with the Madison school district on a project producing instructional materials about Madison. This experience inspired her to develop her writing and photography skills and to produce on her own a sound filmstrip on the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly which was marketed by a local company and sold nationally. When the local materials project ended she was employed for a short time by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Always looking for ways to express her creativity, she became an avid gardener with a special interest in native and perennial flowers. This led to a job at Olds and later Jungs garden centers and to her completing the Master Gardener classes at the University of Wisconsin Extension. When Marcia and Boyd retired to Dodgeville in 1992, her background led to her accepting the volunteer position as Master Gardener Coordinator with the Iowa County Extension office. The classes, which were held in the winter, started small but quickly grew larger in subsequent years. After serving ten years in this capacity she received a plaque showing appreciation for her contribution to the county. Among her accomplishments during this period can be listed the following: Establishing a demonstration garden at Bloomfield; being among the founders of Uplands Garden Club; with two other women, establishing the Iowa County Courthouse park; designing and planting, with the help of other gardeners, the flower bed at Dodgeville Public Library; and creating a showcase of perennial flowers around her beloved home, the Old Rock School.

Marcia continued her interest in the Monarch butterfly by attracting them with milkweed plantings in her yard and by photographing the emergence from their chrysalis. Using prints of these photographs she developed a presentation that she gave to elementary school classes in the area. In 2001 she published a booklet of her poetry, with calligraphy by her friend Dawn Hahn, which she titled wild ginger old concrete and which she distributed to family and friends. Her introduction reads: "My poetry begins in brief encounters with ordinary things of earth during which – inexplicably – reality and truth reach into my distracted self and shake me to attention. The poems like freshly mined limestone not yet hardened into building blocks in time – cohere – and strengthen by belief that there are reasons for being alive on earth."

Marcia was preceded in death by her parents and her brother Thomas Kinder. She is survived by her husband, Boyd, by her three children: Gary Douglas (Cynthia Storm) Geer of Columbia, South Carolina; Barbara Diane (Keith) Newsome of Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina; Lynette Jean (Michael) Geer-Schuh of Sun Prairie; her granddaughter Alexis Lynette Newsome of Kill Devil Hills, NC; her sister Barbara Louise (Ed) Paine of Decatur, Illinois; her sister Janet Diane Kinder of St. Peters, Missouri; and by many nieces and nephews.

If one wishes to make a donation in memory of Marcia, we suggest giving it to Folklore Village, 3210 County Road BB, Dodgeville, WI 53533.

A Celebration of Marcia's Life will be held at FOLKLORE VILLAGE, FARWELL HALL on Saturday, April 7, 2018 at 2:00 p.m. It is held in the spring when the perennial flowers she loved so much begin to bloom.

We wish to thank the dedicated staff at Bloomfield for their loving care of Marcia in the last few months of her life and to Dr. Kathryn Dalsing who was a gardening friend in addition to being a special doctor.