Longtime Guadalajara resident Marcy (Marcia Mae) Matthew died January 30 at the age of 75, after a short illness. In recent years, Matthew was very involved with her family, with the choir at St. Mark’s Anglican Church and the Readers Book Club.
She was born September 29, 1937, in Chicago and raised in an Episcopal family in Minneapolis. As a child, she studied piano, sang, and absorbed opera from her English grandfather who loved it. She lived three years in Japan with her parents, as her father was in the U.S. armed forces occupying that country. There, she made lifelong Japanese friends.
She later lived in Wichita, Kansas, and Tucson, Arizona, where she met her future husband Ron at the age of 15. She attended the University of Arizona. After marrying, she and Ron traveled frequently, and lived in Southern California and Houston. In Houston, from 1964 to 1979, her passion was tennis.
With her husband and children, Matthew moved to Guadalajara in 1979, where she loved writing local stories until the late 1980s for the Guadalajara Reporter. Staff remember her as well read, polite and punctual. In the 1980s she also stage directed, acted and sang in musical comedies, working with Audrey Hoffnung and her daughter Debbie. A high point of Matthew’s life at that time was her participation in Schola Cantorum, a community choir of different English speaking churches in Guadalajara, under renowned musical director Harlan Snow.
Matthew joined St. Mark’s Anglican Church as soon as the family moved to Guadalajara. In 1991, she helped form the church’s choir under Father Charles Hood, and began selecting the hymns, a responsibility she performed until her death.
Her other abiding interests were reading — she was active in the Readers Book Club, which meets monthly at St. Mark’s — and writing poetry, which was only known by her dear friend, called Auntie Lyn by the family, until her death.
Matthew is survived by her husband of 56 years, Ron, her sons R.D. and Mike, all of Puerto Vallarta, her daughter Debbie Rodriguez of Guadalajara, her daughter Barbara Males of New Braunfels, Texas, and numerous grandchildren.
A memorial Mass was celebrated at St. Mark’s Anglican Church January 31.