From his brother Eddie:
First and foremost Marshall was a kind and generous brother.
He was two years older than me. We grew up sleeping in the same bedroom in our junior size twin beds and remained so until Marshall left for college. Our dressers had pull out drawer in the middle that became desks.
Marshall while in high school had a burst appendix and then surgery to remove the appendix. He was supposed to recover and do nothig for 4 weeks but he started playing basketball right away. I remember that one night, he woke me up at which time I saw that the surgery wound had burst with a gangrene infection exposing the wound. He was rushed to the hospital, and was given his last rites by a priest. I remember that next morning Sunday that our Mom and Dad and I were in the car going to church and my Mom was telling my Dad that if Marshall died, it would be God’s will. I later thought that our Mom was very courageous to be talking about Marshall. My Dad and I were not so. But Mom was right. God decided that Marshall’s wounds would heal and he would live like it never happened.
So how did Marshall become such a good golfer? You can credit his brother for some of his skills at golf. During grade school, our parents sent Marshall and I to a two month summer camp at Camp Tivoli in Cecil, Wisconsin. Being two years older, he was in a different cabin of which there were 10 cabins depending on our ages. There were many activities every hour of the day. Twice a week, we had to go horseback riding. Well, Marshall (and I) were terrified of riding those tall horses that seemed like all they wanted to do was turn around and try to bite your leg. I went to camp the year after Marshall started. So because Marshall refused to ride a horse, the counsellors gave Marshall an option to engage in another activity twice a week. The same with me. So I decided that I would do archery (which turned out terrible because I couldn’t pull the bow string back far enough). Meanwhile Marshall chose to play golf on the camp’s 3 hole “golf” course. One of the counsellors took the time to help Marshall learn to play the game. Well he turned out to be the great golfer he became. It became his favorite sport throughout his life. I often wondered why they only let one person to be taught how to play golf.
With the advent of computers in the 80s and 90s and being in the type of fast paced business that relied on telephones, we did all of the tasks manually with regular and then electric typewriters. In 1982, when we moved our existing warehouse in Norridge, IL and our office on South Water Market to a new plant, Marshall unofficially persuaded us to buy a “computer” as he was intrigued with them. He learned how to use MS-DOS which was the original operating system that ran the early word processors and spreadsheets. As the production manager, a computer benefited Marshal greatly. He was self taught and later on, maybe ten years late, in our spare time, he taught me how to use computers. I never had one at work but did buy one when I retired in the late 1990s and used the knowledge Marshall taught me to use Excel, Word, and spreadsheets all from Marshall’s tutoring. Thanks, Marsh.
Our company’s operation gradually became more in-shell packaging and shipping to all the major chain stores from the east coast to the Rockies at Thanksgiving and Christmas time. It was 75% of our total business in this six week selling and shipping season. Our nut business grew but our production didn’t as it was hard to justify buying more machinery for such a short shipping season. So we set up some packaging machines in our Robertsdale, Alabama plant.
In our main plant in Lemont, Illinois, Marshall was the production manager. Marshall would get buried with orders. I remember Marshall was always so busy organizing the orders our sales department fed him. At times, we would have semi tractor trailers lined up all around the plant and down the street. I would come into the office in the morning and Marshall was already there. It turns out that he stayed up all night and then slept on the floor in his office. He was a truly dedicated man. Every year, he helped us thru six weeks of hell.
We talked a lot the last few years. He was always interested in talking about his next venture. Marshall was a very kind, generous and loving brother. Will miss him till we meet again.