Longtime Lakeside resident Gloria Marthai died of heart failure on November 9 at the age of 83.
Born September 7, 1928 in Canton, Ohio, Marthai moved to California in 1950, where she worked as a technical analyst for General Dynamics Corporation.
She and her husband Jim Marthai, an accomplished poet and sculptor, came to Mexico in 1969 after living in California and spending nearly seven years cruising the Bahamas and the U.S. east coast aboard their private 43-foot classic Elko cruiser.
Gloria was initially attracted to Mexico for adventure, economics and the warm, informative Lake Chapala Society. She soon fell in love with the Mexican people and culture. She studied Spanish in earnest using a tutor for two years and finally felt she began to really understand the language in depth two years after that. It was her horse that allowed her to really get in with the locals with her rides in the countryside, participating in rodeos, roundups, parades and pleasure rides. Many of her experiences made their way into her stories published in El Ojo del Lago, the Lake Chapala Review and other places. She was a featured author in the book “Agave Marias.”
Marthai first lived in Ajijic, then Jocotepec and San Pedro Tesistan for 15 years, before moving to the Roca Azul subdivision.
Active in the Lakeside Little Theatre, the Lake Chapala Society and the Lake Chapala Women Writers group, she had a small cottage industry of artistic shirts and worked artistically in mosaics, textiles and mobiles.
Gloria was well known among the local population, becoming part of several families, acting as a comadre for baptisms and a resource counselor for understanding American culture and language. She was simply known as Gloria, the horse riding foreigner that became a Mexican, truly a legend in her own time.
Her husband James died in 2005. She is survived by her daughter, Sunny Russell of Lake Havasu, Arizona and son Robert, of Helen, Georgia.