Correction Appended
Approximately 800 members of the AU community and beyond came together to commemorate the life of Professor Sue Marcum in Bender Arena Tuesday night.
Marcum died unexpectedly in her home Monday, Oct. 25. Police are investigating her death as a homicide.
On the evening of Nov. 9, students and staff mixed with Marcum’s family and friends to form a stream of grief and support, signing a remembrance book and sharing stories of the beloved professor.
Taylor Saia, eMarketing assistant for Kogod’s Marketing and Communications Department and a sophomore in Kogod, helped to plan the memorial, though he never knew Marcum personally.
“It’s really touching to see how the entire campus community came together under such unexpected circumstances,” Saia said. “The amount of support and the willingness of everybody to help the family and donate to the scholarship fund [which Marcum established in her name] and write in the memorial book and everything – I think it says a lot about AU as a campus and as a community.”
Saia emphasized the number of people he has witnessed speaking about Marcum through social media and other forums in the past couple of weeks.
“Everybody wants to show their personal condolences, and I think it just goes to show the level of compassion [at] AU,” Saia said.
Attendants came from beyond the AU community. Kogod alumnus Joel Croft said he knew a student who came in from New York for the memorial. Helen Maleady and her husband of Frederick, Md., traveled to the service with a group of women from the American Society of Women Accountants, of which Marcum was a member.
Sue Marcum’s brother, Alan Marcum, lives in California, but he came to campus to speak at the event.
He said his sister left behind a legacy of being a great teacher.
“Sue did much more than simply appreciate and care about what she was teaching. She cared about what her students were learning,” Alan Marcum said. “That more than the circus examples, more than the experience that she was able to draw upon from being a CPA, that is the lesson that she can leave for all of us who teach: that we care about what our students learn. And that matters whether we are parents teaching our children, professors in college or even kindergarten teachers.”
He said in coming to the school he had seen “grief, respect, admiration and a lot of people grateful for how their lives had been affected.”
“[Sue] would be both very proud and very humbled by [the reactions],” Alan said.
Other speakers included President Neil Kerwin, Kogod Professor Donald Williamson, Master's student in Kogod Jeff Wilson and Marcum’s personal friends, Lisa Colten and Larry March. Rabbi Kenneth Cohen opened and closed the ceremony.
As each individual stood behind the podium, each told stories of Marcum’s intelligence, perfectionism, enthusiasm and deep passion for life.
The stories also revealed sides of Marcum that students could not have gleaned from classroom interactions.
Her brother remembered paying his sister to make his bed as children and joked that this may have launched her career as an accountant.
Colten and March recounted stories of traveling the world with Marcum. They also told of her love of clothing, cooking and her two cats, which are now under the care of March.
Williamson called Marcum “a sparkplug” as well as “my student, my colleague and my trusted friend.”
Williamson related an incident that he said summed up his feelings about Marcum. Williamson and Marcum had prepared a presentation on a Kogod graduate program. When only two students attended the information session, Williamson felt as if their work had been a waste.
“‘Well Don,’” Williamson remembered Marcum saying, “‘we helped two.’”
With that, Williamson encouraged those in the audience to “help two” in memory of Marcum.
sparnass@theeagleonline.com
Correction: This article previously named Tyler Saia, a junior in Kogod, as eMarketing assistant for Kogod’s Marketing and Communications Department. Saia's first name is, in fact, Taylor, and he is a sophomore. Jeff Wilson was also identified as a senior in Kogod when he, is in fact, in pursuit of a Master's. The Eagle regrets these errors.
