Marjory Carol Coker

Marjory Carol Coker departed this life on March 15, 2026, at the Sanford Vermillion Care Center.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 25, 1938, to Spencer and Mary (Thayer) George, she was "secunda" (second) of eight lively children.  Marj grew up near Tillamook, Oregon, where her father worked as a dairy technologist at Tillamook Cheese.  A tomboy, she captained school volleyball and basketball intramural teams with names like Marjory's Mighty Midgets.  Precocious, she skipped a grade and graduated from Tillamook High in 1955 at sixteen as co-valedictorian with her older sister Phyllis.  A last second offer send her to Oregon State University, where she obtained her B.S. in chemistry in 1959 and, in a lifelong love affair with procrastination, her M.A. in chemistry in 1969.

She married at Netarts Friends Church in 1960 to Howard Coker, a fellow chemistry student, who said he married her because she made him laugh.  Marj did the detailed drawings of crystalline structures for his thesis.  A week before Marj was due to give birth to their first child, they moved to Vermillion, where Howard had accepted a stopgap position at the University of South Dakota.  Howard drove her to the old Bunyan's bar and told her that was the extent of downtown.  She was not amused.  But they ended up staying for the remainder of their lives.  After her four children were in school, Marj restarted her career and took on various short-term jobs such as instructor of chemistry at USD until she became head chemist at the South Dakota Geological Survey from 1980-1996.

While she loved the evergreen hills of her youth and often visited Sylvan Lake in the Black Hills, Marj adopted her prairie home with enthusiasm, relishing canoe trips down the Missouri River with family and doing time trials on her 10-speed bike down University Road until a fibromyalgia diagnosis curtailed her.  She earned half-century (50-mile) and century (100-mile) patches from American Wheelman.  She did the century with her son Jon on a windy, 100-degree day.  She was, of course, the last to come in.

For close to thirty years, she was the choir director at the Alliance Church and created the church's original logo and contributed bulletin cover art there before she joined the United Church of Christ.  True to her Quaker roots, she was an advocate for women's leadership roles and in her seventies was a moderator of the congregation then assistant minister for visitation after she obtained an associate degree in theology from Yankton College.  (Though it took her five years.)  Meniere's robbed her of some of her hearing, but she continued to enjoy musical pursuits in the UCC church choir and took up piano lessons that she practiced on her beloved Steinway, which she later gifted to her son Tim.

There were few things she didn't find of interest over her lifetime, including various plans to build a "dream house" on her and her husband's eight acres just north of Vermillion.  Her son Steve finally pinned her down with the (in)famous napkin contract at a Perkins restaurant, in which she signed she would dutifully begin construction in 2001.  Amazingly, she (barely) did so, completing her greatest art project in 2003 in the form of Prairie Eyrie, an Arts & Crafts shingle-style home, whose simple beauty she admired.  Her love of nature was sated there with wild plum thickets and frequent visits from deer and birds of many feathers.  She loved to open her light-filled home to family during the holidays, packing it with music and laughter. She was always proud of her kids and grandkids as individuals in their own right, with their own gifts, which she nurtured.  A bit of a rebel, she also liked to embarrass her teens by daring deeds like racing carts in grocery stores.

Marj was a fan of USD and Oregon State athletics and of Fargo, Wallace and Gromit, Monty Python, and Airplane!  When the spirit moved, she penned poems, especially for friends.  She was an avid reader, both of nonfiction dealing with science and theology and of a good mystery, and she served as a proofreader for her daughter's Dakota-based mysteries.

She is survived by her children Jon (Kay) Coker of Rochester, MN, Mary Kay ("MK") Coker of Vermillion, Steve (Julie) Coker of Lantana, TX, Tim (Shana) Coker of Cedar Rapids, IA; siblings Phyllis Kirkwood of Newberg, OR, Gil (Louise) George of White Rock, NM, John (Anita) George of Scottsdale, AZ, Joel George of Redmond, OR,  Eunice (Steve) Robb of Olympia, WA, and Warren (Peggy) George of Corvallis, OR; and grandchildren Drew, Brendan (Claire), Erin, Jackson, Cameron ("CJ'), Emma Grace ("Aster"), and Amelia Charis Coker and Dara Taylor (Harrison) and their son Auden.  She was predeceased by her husband Howard and her sister Katharine Thayer.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, March 28, at 11 a.m. at the Vermillion United Church of Christ, Congregational.