Marna Neufer

Marna MacMahon Neufer of Decatur, Georgia passed away on September 17, 2021 of natural causes.  She was 93.  She enjoyed her life to the fullest, filling every day with joy, laughter, and love.

Marna was born in Niagara Falls, New York to Florence Wicker MacMahon and James Douglas MacMahon. She and her older sister, the late Janet MacMahon Hickman, lived their childhood years in Niagara Falls, and spent every summer at a beloved family cottage on Lake George in New York.

At age 16, Marna’s life took an unexpected turn when her mother passed away. Marna was sent to live with her aunt in Wilmington, Delaware and had to attend her last two years of high school at a new school. Of this sudden change, Marna writes in her memoir, Memories of My Past, “If I thought about my mother I would cry, but because everything was so different, it was probably the best thing that could have happened.” In her new school, Marna found a wonderful group of friends, sang in a vocal quartet, became vice president of her senior class, and graduated in 1946 with honors.

Yet, it was what happened on the first day at the new school that perhaps shaped her life the most. Her biggest fear was that she would have no one to sit with at lunch. Thankfully, a classmate introduced herself and invited Marna to have lunch with her and her friends. Marna would never forget that act of kindness and inclusion. For the rest of her life, she made it a point to seek out people who were feeling lonely or left out, and she would find a way to help them.

After high school, Marna attended Oberlin College, calling that time the “happiest four years of my life and the only ones I’d do over.” She made many lifelong friends there and loved singing in both her vocal quartet and the large community-based Musical Union. During her senior year, Marna volunteered in a nearby children’s home and made a discovery: she loved working with kids.

When Marna graduated from Oberlin in 1950 with a B.A. in sociology, she and two friends moved to Boston to “seek their fortune.”  During those years, Marna cared for children at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, earned her master’s degree in education at Boston University, and met a young Methodist minister, the late Lester Paul Neufer, who would soon become her husband.

The newlyweds relocated to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where Paul became the minister of the Market Street Methodist Church.  A few years later, when Paul accepted a position at Lycoming College, they built a home where they raised three children and lived for more than fifty years. When her children reached school age, Marna began substitute teaching and eventually accepted a permanent position as a reading specialist in the Montoursville schools. For several years, Marna worked at the high school helping students with reading challenges, then happily moved to the newly-constructed McCall Middle School to work with younger students, because “the sooner you can get the kids reading, the better off they are.”

During her long career, Marna taught hundreds of children to read, both in her school classroom and at home in a thriving tutoring practice. Over the years, she saw a great need for a systematic and comprehensive course of phonics-based instruction, one that would - as she put it - “do the whole job.” Through careful observation and research, Marna responded to the challenge by developing her own sequence of materials that proved highly effective in teaching struggling students to read.  After her retirement from the public schools in the early 1990’s, Marna compiled these materials into a thorough, step-by-step system called TRUST: A Sure Way to Teach Anyone to Read.

Early on, Marna got the travel bug from her husband. Right after they were married, they took a two-month trip to the Holy Land, visiting Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. She went down the Nile, saw the pyramids, and rode a camel. Twice, they packed up the family and moved to Zurich, Switzerland for five months and also visited many of the surrounding countries in Europe. Stateside, they bought a motor home and took the family out west for a six-week trip that included the Grand Canyon and visits to relatives on ranches. After retirement, the two continued to travel all over the U.S. in their motor home. One trip took them to Robbins, Tennessee, where Paul worked for two months building houses with Habitat for Humanity while Marna tutored kids and adults they met during their stay.

In the last decade of her life, Marna endured her share of heartache with an amazing grace and unwavering faith in God’s love -- losing her son, David Paul Neufer of State College, PA, in 2011; her granddaughter, Summer MacMahon Dale of Atlanta, GA, in 2012; and, after 61 years of marriage, her husband Paul in 2014.

After Paul passed away, Marna packed up the house in Williamsport and started a new life in Decatur, Georgia where she could be closer to family. At a time of life when most people slow down, Marna instead reveled in her new big-city life - attending concerts and shows, going to art exhibits, and taking up Spanish. Overjoyed at having found a wonderful retirement community, Marna settled into her cozy apartment for six happy years, enjoying leisurely meals with new friends and delighting in all the singing there (planned or otherwise!). And just as the high school girl had done for her decades ago, Marna always made sure newcomers to the community were welcomed and had someone to sit with at lunch.

One of Marna’s favorite places to be was the family’s cottage on Ganoga Lake in Pennsylvania, which Paul built in 1962. The family spent every summer there when the children were young, and after retirement, she and Paul split their summers between the cottage and their house in Williamsport. This past August, Marna was thrilled to enjoy a week there with her entire clan ---daughters, Holly Neufer Batchelor and Lynne Neufer Dale; daughter-in-law Nancy Lewald Neufer; sons-in-law William George Batchelor and Charles Robins Williams, Jr.; grandsons Paul Blake Batchelor, William David Batchelor, and Jordan McDonald Dale; granddaughter-in-law Emily Small Batchelor; and great-grandsons Asa David Batchelor and William Alexander Batchelor.

Marna was the heart and soul of her family, and her loving presence will be missed beyond measure.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Team Summer, a non-profit which helps kids with cancer that was started by Marna’s granddaughter during her own cancer battle (www.teamsummer.org/donate); or The Salvation Army, an organization Marna admired for the way they helped those in urgent need (www.salvationarmyusa.org).