The Rev. Marylen Stansbery~
Marylen was born in Kansas City on June 22, 1935, to Leonard O. and Athene Morrison Wilkins. She is survived by her husband of 30 years, Gary Stansbery, and her sisters Lucy Jarvis (Doug) and Donna Panzl (David), and her children Joan Melgaard (Mike Saunderson), Paul Melgaard (Jenifer), and Nels Melgaard (Anne), her step daughters Lisa Wortmann (Andy) and Kathy Stansbery (Rob Risby), along with many grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and people who are family by choice.
The Rev. Marylen Stansbery died at home on Christmas Eve at the age of 82. Marylen was a woman of many talents and many careers and many firsts. She was mentor known not necessarily for giving advice but for asking the kinds of questions that lead one to consider the many options and evaluate their next steps.
Once she was taught how to knit by her paternal grandmother at the age of 5, Marylen became an avid knitter who took on increasingly difficult patterns and knitted countless baby blankets, hats, and scarves for the homeless, and prayer shawls for those in times of need.
As a child, her organizational skills were already taking shape. She had all of her dolls listed on 3×5 cards which she kept in a box and arranged them according to different attributes.
The first time Marylen ran for political office, at the age of 32, was just two years after she received her driver’s license. She was the first woman elected to the local city council and went on to serve in various local elected positions representing the Democratic party in St. Louis County, work on campaigns for others, serve as a party delegate, and run the offices of others once they were elected.
In the late 1960’s when alcoholism was still taboo, and a woman could lose her children for getting sober, Marylen did, indeed, get sober. She passed away with over 47 years of continuous sobriety where she touched the lives of many women, and their families, as a sponsor or confidant. As she got older, she more than once commented that she was grateful that being a sober woman was no longer a crime. Thankfully, times do change.
As time went on, Marylen enrolled at Lindenwood University to finish the undergraduate degree she started at the University of Michigan before she married, moved to St. Louis, and had her children Joan, Paul, and Nels Melgaard. She graduated from Lindenwood University with her undergraduate degree the same year her oldest graduated from high school. She later added an MBA from Lindenwood University, but all who knew her were well-aware of her organizational skills and making order of things long before she earned that degree.
As a professional administrator, she worked as a program director in the addiction treatment industry in St. Louis and Pennsylvania and served on the National Council on Alcoholism. This was followed by a career as an entrepreneur when Marylen owned and operated Diet Centers in Clayton and Creve Coeur.
Marylen grew up in the Episcopal church and would have pursued a career in the church had the doors been open to women in the mid-50s. Once she retired from paid work, she began her
studies to become the first deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri; she was sponsored by St. Timothy’s Church and was ordained on April 30th, 1998.
Through her work in the church, Marylen shared her compassion for others and her grassroots activism through her servant leadership at a variety of Episcopal parishes in the St. Louis area: Church of the Holy Communion, St. Mark’s, and St. John’s. She served the Diocese of Missouri in various capacities and was a mentor to many Deacons.
Beyond the church, she sat on the board of St. Andrews Episcopal Presbyterian Foundation and its programs for seniors. She served on the board for the Lighthouse for the Blind and was very dedicated to Faith Beyond Walls, the St. Louis interfaith partnership that works to strengthen the network of religious congregations through social outreach and community building where she was founding Executive Director in 2001. Previously, she inaugurated a faith-based mentoring program to help move men and woman from welfare to work where she became involved with Connections to Success, which is dedicated to breaking the generational cycle of poverty by helping people find and keep jobs.