Skuylar ""Sky"" Marshall

Skuylar (Schuylar) Dean Marshall, 61, of Aurora, Colorado, died suddenly on November 5, 2018.

Sky, as he was known to friends and family, was born in Inglewood, California on May 29, 1957, the son of Herman T. Marshall and June G. Marshall.

Sky graduated from Widefield High School in 1975, and then attended Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, majoring in Psychology.

After college, Sky held a variety of positions in the food industry including line cook, sous chef, and restaurant manager. Sky later subcontracted as a computer technician and then worked in customer service. He worked at ViaWest (now Flexential) since 2002, where he reached the position of TAC Supervisor, Technical Assistance Center Supervisor. He also was also responsible for the on-boarding and training of all the new hires in our department for the last several years. In 2009, Sky was named Employee of the Quarter (Q1) by ViaWest. In 2014, Sky's exceptional expertise and dedication to customer service was recognized by ViaWest in an ‘employee spotlight’.

Sky was preceded in death by his parents and his wife, Meredith A. Johnson.

Sky is survived by his sister, Janice L. Marshall, brother, Herman L. (Jenny) Marshall, nieces, Aurora (Bryce) Davis and Ursa Davis, nephews, Eric Marshall and Keith Marshall. He is also survived by an uncle, Walter Gillespie, and two aunts, Anna Cantrell and Virginia Morgan, and numerous cousins. He was especially close to his cousin, Shalynn (Steven) Womack.

In lieu of flowers, memorials in Sky's honor may be made to MaxFund, a no-kill animal shelter.

In Remembrance of Sky Marshall

By

Shalynn Womack

 

My earliest memory of Sky provides a snapshot of how our entire relationship would eventually unfold:

It was 1962, and my parents were in Nashville visiting relatives, including Sky's mother, Aunt June.

While at Aunt June's house, she suggested I go outside and find Janice, so we could play together. I walked around the neighborhood, but couldn't find Jan. She was older than me and not real interested in hanging out with a four-year-old anyway. So I headed back to June's house-and promptly got lost. I was scared, and started crying.

Eventually, I saw some adults standing outside a house, and raced toward them. It was June and some other relatives, who told me to go inside and find Herman Lee and Schuylar. Maybe they could play with me.

I found Herman, absorbed in a book, and not interested in playing. But Sky told me he'd play with me. He took me back to the room he shared with Herman and showed me their bunk beds, toys, and games. Then he generously offered to share his toys. Which made me stop crying...a pattern that would repeat itself through the years.

I would not see Sky again until 1978, when we met up in Nashville and then headed up to Boston for Herman's graduation from MIT.

That long car trip provided many insights about us cousins. That adventure would become the source of many laughs over the years-although at the time, it was one of our more traumatic family trips!

In 1982, Sky and I made another road trip-this time from his home in Security, Colorado to Nashville. At the time, I was living with Aunt June and Sky, so when he had to return to Nashville in the dead of winter for a court appearance (answering for some minor misdeeds during his college years), Aunt June asked (told) me to accompany him to Tennessee.

We left Security in his old yellow Datsun on a bitter cold January day. The Datsun was a stick shift-which I had no idea how to drive. So Sky promised to do all the driving. That is, until we got halfway through Kansas.

Night fell and Sky pulled into the parking lot of a mall next to the interstate where we spent the night in the car. We had very little cash on us and no credit cards, so motel rooms were out of the question.

The car quickly became an ice box so Sky covered me up with sleeping bags, his coat, and anything else he could find. I finally drifted off to sleep for a few hours, waking at dawn to find myself covered in ice crystals. Sky, meanwhile, was already awake looking no worse for the wear!

We hit the road again. After an hour of stoic silence, Sky said he was too tired to keep driving and I'd have to take over! I reminded him that I didn't know how to drive a stick shift. He said it didn't matter, that Kansas was so flat and straight, all I had to do was keep it in fifth gear and we'd be fine.

I was not convinced-actually, I was terrified. Nevertheless, Sky was resolute-I was going to drive and he was going to sleep!

He pulled off the interstate and we switched places, with Sky talking me through when to put my foot on the clutch so he could shift from first to fifth from the passenger's side. Finally, it was in fifth gear and Sky laid back and went to sleep!

Turns out he was right about making it through Kansas solely in fifth gear! After we turned south and crossed into Oklahoma, Sky resumed driving.

We had more adventures on that single road trip than all our other excursions combined-including finding a distraught woman crouched in the back seat of our unlocked car after we stopped to buy snacks at a gas station in Little Rock. She begged us to take her to North Little Rock and drop her off at her sister's house, so we did. It was just that kind of trip!

Later that same year, Sky and I started delivering pizza at Fort Carson. We worked for a pizza joint located just outside the base and our pay was contingent on volume sales and tips.

My ever-resourceful cousin devised a plan for how we could sell more pizzas and soft drinks: he would drive, because he was not afraid to speed a bit and I would run the pizzas to the soldiers-He said that since I was ""cute"" and ""smiled a lot"" we'd sell more! Maybe he was right-I chatted with the guys while Sky remained in the car, so they weren't terrified by his imposing presence and we did indeed sell more pizzas than any of the other delivery drivers.

The pizza joint was in a constant state of chaos, filling incoming orders while delivery drivers clamored to jam as many pizzas as possible into portable warming ovens sitting in their cars, which were lined up out back. Competition was fierce.

So Sky devised a scheme for us to work as a team-he would literally body-block competing drivers, so they couldn't reach the soda machine while I'd fill up as many soft drink cups as I could and then slam them into carry-all containers. When I gave him the signal, we'd race to our car and speed away, careening toward the base loaded down with pizzas and soda to sell on the spot!

We were the only delivery ‘team' working in tandem, and by using Sky's strategy, earned pretty good money. Of course, there were slow nights, and it was then that we'd sit in our car and eat the pizzas we hadn't sold! Other times, we'd head to the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot and add donuts to the mix! It was an interesting, but nutritionally-challenging experience!

Aside from our zany adventures, I knew another side of Sky-one that few people had access to-that is, his compassion for broken people and pets.

Sky did not have an easy life, beginning with the tragic death of his father when he was just eighteen months old. And Aunt June was not the warmest person in the world. Still, Sky repeatedly demonstrated (albeit covertly) a caring nature to those he perceived in need of help-he did so the day he offered to share his toys with me, he did it when we were young adults and he saw me struggling, and he did it later in life with his wife, Meredith. And I'm sure there are other folks out there, who we do not know, that were beneficiaries of Sky's compassion.

Sky was a self-proclaimed cynic who took pride in his aloofness-most photos of Sky feature his legendary scowl that was designed to discourage approach! But there was much more to him than reclusiveness and cynicism.

Sky loved psychology, for example. It was his major in college. Albert Ellis was his favorite ‘famous' therapist. Since I was also a psychology major, we had many lively debates about his choice of therapists to emulate. Ellis, who founded the branch of psychotherapy known as the ‘rational emotive' approach, was very logical and rational about his approach to human behavior-the perfect choice for someone like Sky. Like minds.

Not surprisingly, Sky also enjoyed reading the work of Henry David Thoreau, and once told me that his favorite quote was written by the similarly reclusive essayist.

Unfortunately, Sky did not specify which quote, but knowing Sky as I did, I am guessing it's this:

""I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.""

 

Or perhaps:

 

""If a man does not keep pace with his
companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let
him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.""

 

Sky lived much of his life in solitude, marching to the beat of an unconventional drummer, far from his family. Still, he left a vivid impression on his sister, brother, and me-he was not forgotten and now, the presence of his absence will remain with us always.

 

On that note, I end this remembrance with something Sky once wrote at the end of a long letter to me:

 

""I'm about ready to sign off now since there are only odds and ends left to say, and they don't really belong in a paragraph-but I would like to say-and I realize that you will never let me hear the end of it-that my definition of ‘that word' (love) is that it means never having to say it because the other knows it.""

 

And so while he did not say it, I believe he did love us. In his way.

 

End

 

 

Gathering: November 12, 2018 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Horan & McConaty - South Metro/Centennial
5303 E County Line Rd
Centennial, CO 80122