Longtime teacher was avid boater

11/14/2006

Marilyn M. Bureau, who retired after teaching for 34 years at St. Rose Catholic School in Perrysburg and was active in the Toledo-area boating scene with her husband, died of pancreatic cancer Sunday in the Hospice of Northwest Ohio, Perrysburg Township. She was 71.

Mrs. Bureau began teaching in 1960 at the request of Msgr. Max Walz, then pastor at St. Rose, who rewarded her acceptance with a classroom of 50 first-graders. "He saw qualities in her that he wanted at his school," her son, Michel, said.

With such a large class, she was terrified. But by the next day, she knew all their names and until her death could name those in that first class.

Over the years, Mrs. Bureau became a counselor and mentor to many of her former pupils. In particular, her son said, she did whatever she could to inspire the children's imaginations.

After 28 years teaching first grade, she taught three years each of third grade and art class. She also was a summer tutor and a Safety Town instructor.

She and John Bureau, her sweetheart at Liberty Center High School, whom she married after graduating, raced sailboats in their younger years and later served together on the race committee for the Inter-Lake Yachting Associations' annual regatta.

Surviving are her husband, John; sons, Michel and Ronald; daughter, Teresa S. Frick; brother, Thomas Swartzlander; sister, Colleen Hogrefe, and seven grandchildren.

The body will be in the Witzler-Shank Funeral Home, Perrysburg, after 2 p.m. Thursday. Services will be at 10:15 a.m. Friday in St. Rose Catholic Church.

The family suggests tributes to the Marilyn Bureau Scholarship Fund at the church, the hospice, or the American Cancer Society.