Marlyn and her family were driven from eastern Colorado in 1940 by drought and crop failure. They lived in Wyoming for a few years, and in 1944, moved to Jerome Park where they stayed until 1956 when Marlyn worked for CRMS.

Marlyn came to work at Colorado Rocky Mountain School during graduation week, 1956, and was for several years cook for the summer work camps. When her kitchen responsibilities grew, Marlyn moved to the school and lived in a trailer parked across from the Log House. There she, Lyle, and Dawn stayed for eight years, surrounded by Marlyn’s famous flower garden, and the hustle and bustle of the campus.

Marlyn Fiscus joined CRMS at the beginning in 1956 as a lunch cook, working in that capacity until her retirement in 1998. Marlyn once visited an American Studies class when they were reading The Grapes of Wrath and spoke of raising a child in eastern Colorado during the Dust Bowl. She had to put cheesecloth over the cradle to keep the baby from suffocating. She and her husband pioneered at Spring Gulch when it was a mining camp. According to former faculty Sue Lavine, Marlyn “wanted to be pictured with her mixing bowl, because she loved baking the bread that gave the community so much pleasure.”

“Hands-down the master baker!” says one of Marlyn’s co-workers.

“An indefatigable worker…Marlyn embodies a work ethos that puts even Rocky Mountain’s philosophy to shame. The quality and nutritional value of her baked food are unexcelled. Some of her recipes are seventy years old; some are from hard times and require no eggs – and make use of bread crumbs.”