Marion Jauch Burrows (Feb. 2, 1930 – June 5, 2026)
Her sparkling eyes, warm laugh, and generous ways were gifts Marion brought into this world, touching family members and friends alike over the ninety-six years of her life. She was born and raised in Lombard, IL, and in the course of her life lived with her husband and growing family in Abilene, TX, St. David’s, PA, Arkadelphia, AR, Ada, OK, and Colorado Springs, CO, before settling in Whitewater, WI, in 1965. Generosity of heart, compassion toward those in need in and beyond her community, and an unwavering commitment to fairness and justice marked her life.
Marion was born on February 2, 1930, and died at the age of ninety-six on June 5, 2026, from complications related to a stroke she experienced on June 1. Her parents, Elsie Jauch (née Huber) and Alfred Jauch, immigrated in the early 1920s to Chicago from Schwenningen am Neckar, a town nestled on the eastern edge of the Black Forest in Germany that was celebrated for its clock manufacturing. She grew up as the only daughter among three brothers, Werner, Herb, and Bobby, attending school in Lombard, IL, and graduating from Glenbard High School in 1948.
Her first job was as a clerk in a bank in downtown Chicago, commuting daily with a circle of girlfriends on the train. In 1949, she saw an ad for a German language school in Austria and made the momentous decision to attend that summer. It was there that she met her husband-to-be, Robert (Bob) Nelson Burrows (1923 – 2020), a Marine veteran who had served in the South Pacific and was at the time a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh. They met after an evening slide lecture on Alpine wildflowers and spoke until the early morning hours. Bob proposed two days later and Marion accepted. Bob left Scotland sooner than planned, moving to Lombard in 1950 to join Marion. The two wed on February 28, 1951, the beginning of a marriage that lasted for sixty-nine years until his death in April, 2020.
Marion and Bob brought three sons into the world: David Nelson Burrows, Mark Stephen Burrows, and John Richard Burrows (now deceased); her niece, Linda Jauch Jennings, joined the family in her early childhood. A devoted mother, Marion worked at various jobs once the boys were in school—first as the church secretary at the First Presbyterian Church of Ada, Oklahoma, and later as an administrative assistant, first in the Whitewater law offices of Easton Johnson and Robert Debaufer and later in the Registrar’s Office at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. She eventually enrolled as a full-time student there, completing her B.A. while working at the Registrar’s Office. She was an active member of various clubs and organizations in Whitewater, including the Emerson Club, Delta Kappa Gamma Society International (a professional society for women educators), and the League of Women Voters.
After graduating from the university with honors in 1972, with a major in English and a minor in German, Marion practice-taught at Palmyra Junior High School before taking a position as a high school English teacher at Parker High School in Janesville, a position she held for more than a quarter century until her retirement in 1990. While teaching full-time, she also completed a Master of Education in Professional Development, in 1978, also with honors. Over the years, Marion joined her husband on three of his year-long “sabbaticals”: faculty exchanges in Melbourne, Australia (when Marion took courses in Australian literature to prepare a new class for her high school students) and Klagenfurt, Austria, as well as a year in Taegu, Korea, when Bob had a Fulbright Professorship while Marion gathered a circle of faculty wives to teach them English. En oute to Australia, she and Bob enjoyed a round-the-world tour, visiting Europe, Egypt, India, Nepal, and Bali before arriving in Melbourne.
During their sixty-one years in Whitewater, Marion served her community in various capacities, among others as an election poll worker and, in her later years, as greeter at the polling station in Whitewater, welcoming people, helping them with questions they had, and inviting them to participate in this elemental part of our democracy. As one long-time Whitewater resident recently noted, “One of the best things about having the right to vote was being greeted by Marion at the polls.” Over the decades, Marion and Bob also supported graduate students from various foreign countries, offering them free room and board and integrating them into the community. This was an enriching experience for the entire family as we welcomed a refugee couple from Uganda who were fleeing the terror of the Idi Amin regime, and, later, graduate students from the Cameroon, Korea, Mexico, and Poland.
Marion and Bob were active church members throughout their lives. In the early years of their marriage, they attended Baptist churches and Bob taught at Baptist colleges. During their years in Whitewater, they became involved with the Ecumenical Institute in Chicago, exploring current theological voices that sought to engage social and cultural questions in progressive ways. They eventually left the Southern Baptist world given its rigid conservatism and regressive political stands, first becoming Presbyterians and later Congregationalists after their move to Whitewater. During the tumultuous years of the late 1960s, they left the First Congregational Church and became founding members, in 1971, of a creative church start, the Community of Christ the Servant, an ecumenical congregation that existed for fifty-two years until it closed in 2023. At that time, she joined the First Methodist Church in Whitewater, returning to her childhood roots in Methodism.
The Burrows family also traveled extensively together, spending the summer of 1967 camping across Europe in a VW bus. Subsequent years found them regularly enjoying wilderness canoe trips in the Quetico Provincial Park, the Canadian side of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. Marion and Bob also led many summer seminars entitled “The Best of Britain” tours, three-week travel seminars in Great Britain, attended by many of Bob’s graduate students in English along with others with an interest in British history, literature, and culture. These tours focused on writers associated with particular regions of Great Britain, from Stratford of Shakespeare and Wessex of Thomas Hardy to Yorkshire of the Brontës, the Lake District of the English romantics, and western Scotland of Robert Burns.
Marion is survived by two of her three sons: David, an astrophysicist who is Professor Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University, married to Lynn Rockwell; and Mark, a retired historian and writer who had taught in Washington, DC, suburban Boston, and most recently Bochum, Germany, married to Ute Molitor; and by Linda Jauch Jennings, who retired from a career in healthcare management, near Colorado Springs, CO, where she lives with her husband, Perry. Marion’s youngest son, John, who died in 2023, had been a successful “historical design merchant” (as he called himself) who started his own company in Boston, “Burrows & Co.,” a purveyor of interior accessories—carpets, lace, and wallpapers—appropriate for Victorian-era homes, churches, and public buildings.
Marion was devoted to her family, which eventually came to include six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren: David’s four children, Daniel (married to Kate Ho, with children Andrew and Clara), Susannah (married to James Baldwin), Michael (married to Frances Burley, with daughter Elliott and son Asa), and Stephen (married to Piper Lewis), and Mark’s two children, Emma Clare Burrows Brink (married to Brian Brink, with daughter Leela) and (Madeline) Joey Rose. Linda Jennings’s husband, Perry, has a daughter, Sara, with three children: Cora, Julian and Winter.
Marion’s passions included gardening, knitting, reading, travel, conversation, and singing. In her younger years, she had leading roles in community musicals, including “South Pacific,” “Oklahoma,” and “The Music Man.” For many years she also sang in area community choirs, and for half a century directed the church choir at the Community of Christ the Servant. She had a golden mezzo-soprano voice that brought joy to countless audiences over the long arc of her singing career.
In 2004, she and Bob moved to Fairhaven, a retirement community in Whitewater. As lifelong Democrats, they founded the “Progressive Club” during their years there, inviting residents to engage in thoughtful discussions of contemporary issues in the nation and world. Both were involved for decades in Whitewater’s “Gourmet Club,” which hosted monthly meals in homes devoted to a particular cuisine. For many years she also helped to host Burns Dinners, first in Ada and later in Whitewater; such events are held annually in towns and cities across Scotland (and elsewhere among those with Scottish heritage) in celebration of the Scottish poet Robert Burns’s birthday on January 25.
Marion was a friend to many, a tireless advocate for local causes that sought the betterment of her community, and a stalwart voice for integrity and decency in public life. The world was richer for her presence, which will continue to be felt in the lives of all those who knew and loved her. A memorial service will be held at Fairhaven later this summer.
