Marjorie McDonald

MARJORIE MCDONALD

Marjorie McDonald was born on April 17, 1898 in Akron, Indiana to Albert A. and Orpha Campbell. One of 6 children, Marjorie and her family moved to Portland, Oregon in 1912. Graduating from Jefferson High, she attended Reed college for 3 years, receiving her teaching degree from University of Oregon in 1919. Her first teaching assignment was at Mt. View School in Lewisburg, where she taught for 1 year. Moving to Portland, the next 40 years were spent teaching at Washington High School. Marjorie married John McDonald in 1925.

An avid fisherman, he and Marjorie spent many wonderful times in a small cabin on the Winder River before he died in 1943. At that time, Marjorie accepted a job teaching English to Russians who were in Portland shipping war material. She attended the famous language school at Middlebury, Vermont. Returning to Portland in 1944, she started the first high school Russian class in the United States. On her sabbatical leave in 1955, she studied Russian at the University of London. The summers from 1959 through 1961 were spent in Moscow, furthering her study of the Russian language.

Upon retirement, Marjorie discovered the therapeutic value of art in a futile attempt to alleviate her severe migraine headaches. She left a loyal audience in Portland to move to Corvallis in 1980. Her work gained critical and popular success in the 1980s. The Jamison/Thomas and Lawrence Galleries of Portland, the Schubert Gallery of Albany and the Stevenson Galler in Corvallis all handled her work, which is in hundreds of collections around the country.

Marjorie was preceded in death by her brothers Angus, Donald and Malcolm. Her sisters, Mary Gynther of Portland and Jean Travers of Los Angeles, survived her at the time, as do numerous nieces and nephews.

portrait by Edna Kovacs