Put to Rest

Disneyland, "The Happiest Place on Earth"... yet now my mom is in the Happiest Place... HEAVEN

Friends Forever... the FBC's last group picture

Eulogy

By Kathy Jablonski

Everyone that has ever met Marleen will smile when they hear her name.

I met Marleen in first grade at Mary Star of the Sea Elementary School in San Pedro. We quickly became friends with Phyllis D’Ambra and Kathy Brock. We continued with that friendship all the way through elementary school. There was only one Catholic girl’s high school in San Pedro and so we met our new friends Donna Hirn, Claudia Calandrino, Rose Mary Franklin, Corozon Barnett, and Annette Sickatich. We had many adventures in high school, but I am not going to talk about those adventures today. Just know that we had wonderful high school years.

We got busy getting our first two years of college out of the way and then we moved to San Jose to finish college. We all had full time jobs and took as many classes as we could get. These were the years that the servicemen were returning from Vietnam. Marleen wrote her own major at San Jose and it was a new idea at the time.

Marleen was meant to teach special education. Her first love was her family, but her second love was teaching. She had a lot of insight on what was important to teach. Donna and I would come home from work or school and the phone would ring. When we answered it there was just heavy breathing at the other end. Was it a stalker? No, it was one of Marleen’s special education students learning to use a phone for the first time.

When we graduated we went our separate ways for the first time. Marleen joined the peace corp, learned to speak Arabic and went to Morocco to teach classes for the Moroccan children.

When Marleen returned from the peace corp she decided to come to Susanville to figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She met my next door neighbor, the very handsome and recently returned from Vietnam vet, Joe Golonsky. About the same time I met someone in Susanville that I was really serious about, Tom Jablonski. We both got married in 1976 about five weeks apart. Do you know how much confusion there is in a small town when we changed our names from Marincovich and Schafer to Golonsky and Jablonski?

After Marleen and Joe’s oldest daughter, Dawn, was born, they moved to Lindsay where they had Matt, Andrew, Laura, and Ben. They would make the trip back to Susanville whenever they could because Joe’s dad still lived there.

When our children got a little older, we girls planned different trips over long weekends to different places but mostly to San Francisco, Corozon’s home. We loved getting together in San Francisco, but we could have gotten together anywhere and enjoyed each other’s company. We shared happy and sad stories about our families and loved ones. We spent most of the time catching up on each other’s lives.

About this same time, Marleen went back to work and decorated every corner of her classroom in bright colors, pictures, and beautiful quilts she had collected. She loved teaching and each of her students was very special to her.

One of the greatest pleasures in Marleen’s life was her grandchildren. She has six beautiful grandchildren, Elijah, Matthew, Kaleb, Madison, Mason, and Selah and another beautiful grandchild, Emily Marleen on the way.

Marleen leaves behind her parents Andrew and Matilda Marincovich, her two sisters Andrea and Debbie and many nieces and nephews. Other special people in her family are Mireya, who helped care for her in the last few moments of her life, Hector, Ida, Matt-Matt, and Hailey.

Her beloved Joe and her children would like to thank you for coming and for your support throughout her illness.

We know you are still Marleen and you will be forever in our hearts. We look forward to seeing you in heaven.