Alberta Marshall 

November 17, 1923 – August 17, 2017

A beautiful and extraordinary lady has left our lives. Alberta Marshall died at the Wesley Health Care Center in Saratoga Springs, New York on August 17, 2017 at the age of 93. She was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on November 17, 1923, the eldest child of Gertrude and Albert Farler. She was educated in Winnipeg public schools and was the first in her family to graduate from the University of Manitoba, with a degree in education. She used the knowledge gained as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse on the Manitoba prairie.  

While at the university Alberta met her husband-to-be, Alexander Marshall (in a canoe, as she liked to tell it). They were married on September 18, 1946, after which they moved to Louisville, Kentucky for a job in the insurance industry for Alex and as a schoolteacher and librarian for Alberta. She became a naturalized American citizen. Several years later they relocated to California, where their four children were born. In 1968 they moved to Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, where they lived for seventeen years. They traveled widely in the U.S. after retirement before settling in Tucson, Arizona. In 2001 Alberta moved to a senior community in Bennington, Vermont, and then to Diamond Ridge in Troy, New York.

Alberta was a person of many talents and interests. She loved life and loved people, and in return was loved by many. She was a voracious reader, a lover of music and talented pianist, an energetic walker, a determined housekeeper who earned the fond sobriquet “tidy lady,” a committed member of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) on whose behalf she traveled worldwide, an avid gardener, and the family historian. In addition to all this, she was the manager of “family laughs,” for which she will be long and lovingly remembered.

She was predeceased by her husband Alexander and by her son Rory Neil Marshall.
She is survived by her sister Edna Lentle of Winnipeg; daughters Laurel Cleary and husband Robin of Brentwood, California and Fern Bradley and husband Tom Cole of Cambridge, NY; son Barry Wayne Marshall and wife Jeri Burns of Philmont, NY. She has seven grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews, all of whom she took time to know.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be sent to the National Wildlife Federation or the Wesley Foundation.

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