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Marilyn Quay “Mike” Sparks

Marilyn Quay “Mike” Sparks died at home in Deep River on May 8, 2024, with her daughters Stacey and Hilary, her son-in-law Roger Williams, and her caregiver Christine Griggs at her side. Just days before her death, her son, Ben, and most of her extended family gathered to celebrate her, an event in which she fully and joyously participated.

Marilyn Joan Quay was born on Feb. 26, 1928, in Canton, Ohio, to Harold Emery Quay and Esther Anne Thomas Quay. She was deeply proud of her Calvinist Scots and Welsh ancestors who fought for reforms, including women’s suffrage and the right to unionize.

Marilyn was raised in Lakewood, Ohio, and attended Ohio Wesleyan University, where she majored in English and was on the dean’s list all four years. As a freshman, she met a handsome upperclassman named Andrew Sparks and promptly beat him at a game of pool. He realized that he had met his match and doggedly wooed her away from her high school sweetheart. Andy and Mike (he gave her the nickname) married four years later and were soulmates until his death in 2019.

From 1960 until 2016, they lived in a beautiful old red farmhouse in the village of Olmsted Falls, Ohio, where they raised their three children. Mike served as the first female planning commissioner in town; spearheaded the successful effort to have a National Register historic district established in Olmsted Falls; helped organize the Olmsted Falls Architectural Review Board and eventually served as its Chair; wrote campaign literature, set strategy, and canvassed for local, state and national political candidates; worked as a public service librarian; chaired successful funding campaigns for the local library and schools; was elected president of the 500-member Cuyahoga County Public Library Staff Association; served as national staff director for 9 to 5, the National Association of Working Women; and served as the executive director of divorce equity, an organization devoted to helping school systems adopt model policies related to nontraditional families. She persuaded town officials to stop using DDT in the early 1960s and successfully fought an initiative to widen a two-lane village road into a four-lane highway. She volunteered to help the United Farm Workers, protested the Vietnam War, and celebrated the first Earth Day. It’s little wonder that members of George McGovern’s presidential campaign tried to persuade her to run for national political office.

The details of Mike’s biography suggest the scope of her talents but cannot come close to conveying the extraordinary force of her personality and her positive impact on those around her. She was not Dickens’ Mrs. Jellyby, saving the world while neglecting her children, but a superb mother: patient, engaged, and creative. Mike loved babies and children and appreciated their individuality from the moment they were born.

She was a peerless hostess. According to Andrew, she would rise from her deathbed for a party, and, in the words of a family friend, she was “a purveyor of hilarity” – quick to see and share the absurd and the delightful. While many suburban women were making casseroles with canned soup, Mike was experimenting with recipes from MFK Fisher and Julia Child. She was always elegant and stylish – often on a shoestring.

She was also a peerless giver of wise counsel. She convinced people that they could do things they had previously thought impossible, then showed them how, and finally gave them the support they needed to implement their plans. She dispensed boundless encouragement in a quintessentially Midwestern way: practical but lighthearted.

Mike lost many things in her final years: her beloved husband, her mobility, and her physical independence, yet she remained courageous, elegant, and deeply engaged in life. She was surrounded by her loving family and by a team of extraordinary professional caregivers who became her close friends.

Mike leaves behind her daughter, Stacey Sparks, and son-in-law, Roger Williams; her son, Bennett Sparks, and daughter-in-law Angela Park of Norwich, Vermont; her daughter, Hilary Sparks-Roberts, and son-in-law, Kevin Roberts, of Lyme; grandchildren Dinah Williams (Marco Aveledo), Emery Williams, Quay Roberts (Adam Kuhn), Conor Roberts, Georgia Sparks, and Theo Sparks; and great-grandchildren, Felix Roger and Lyra Valentine Aveledo. She also leaves the daughters of her heart, Annie Holden and Meghan O’Connell (Paul Lembesis, son Alex); her brother Tom Quay and his wife Winnifred Cutler; Andrew’s sister, Babette Brandt – discovered late in life and treasured; and her friend of 60 years and relative by marriage, Portia Williams Weiskel. Mike was predeceased by her husband and by Tom and Shelburne Weiskel and Nicholas Lembesis, whose losses she felt keenly until the end.

In memory of Mike, please vote this fall for a better world for all. A memorial service will be held later this year.