After 41 years in this country, Marie Etheridge, born and reared in Britain, was thoroughly acclimated in America. Just the same, she created and lovingly maintained a little bit of England at her home in Ellenwood.
“She made our front yard like an English garden,” said her husband, Jimmy Etheridge. “It had a hedge all around and sloped down from the street to the house. It had a pond for koi, which she dug herself, and the pond was fed by water cascading down from a spring. We have three large trees, one of them a hawthorn, which is sometimes called an English dogwood, and she planted flower gardens around all three.”
She chose a different motif for the backyard -- more Georgia-like, he said. There were bountiful rose bushes lining the fence and sawgrass, hibiscus and crepe myrtle bordering a swimming pool.
In the backyard she planted a lever-leaf mahonia, whose seeds are a big favorite with birds, and she stocked the front with bird and squirrel feeders. “Marie loved to sit and watch the animals gather to eat,” her husband said. “There weren’t too many species she didn’t like.”
Marie Jean Etheridge, 59, of Ellenwood, died Thursday of congestive heart failure at Henry General Hospital. A memorial Mass is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Monday at St. James the Apostle Catholic Church, McDonough. Horis A. Ward Fairview Chapel and Memorial Garden is in charge of arrangements.
Mrs. Etheridge came to the United States in 1968 when her father, A. Tom Brooks, a former Royal Air Force engineer, was brought in to consult in the development of the C-5 military transport plane at Lockheed’s Marietta facility. Only 18 at the time, Mrs. Etheridge initially intended to stay here for just a year, said her younger sister, Susan Holmes of McDonough. Instead, she took some business school courses, obtained her work permit and took a succession of secretarial jobs.
Over the next 10 years, Mrs. Etheridge gradually moved into the print production phase of advertising, working for firms in Atlanta, California and Connecticut. The expertise that she developed along the way was all self-taught, her sister said.
Returning to Atlanta in 1979, Mrs. Etheridge took an advertising job with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she met her future husband, Mr. Etheridge, an AJC advertising artist at the time. The two were married in 1980.
Over the years Mrs. Etheridge worked for several ad firms, capping her career with a 17-year stint at the Morrison Agency, where she was director of the creative studio and traffic department. Her ad campaigns for Porsche automobiles and Ronald McDonald House charities won industry awards.
“Marie was a pro -- extremely knowledgeable about the production process and exceptional at training people,” said a longtime friend and business associate, Kathy Hoerler of Stone Mountain. “She had a keen eye for color, design and problem-solving.”
An assistant at the Morrison Agency, Kira Walker of Atlanta, remembered Mrs. Etheridge as a patient mentor and a thoughtful boss. “Whenever someone had a birthday in our office, they could count on coming to work to find a crystal vase on their desk with flowers that Marie had picked from her garden and arranged.”
Mrs. Etheridge got to be nearly as accomplished on greens and fairways as she was in the garden. Playing at the Lake Spivey Golf Club, she shot a career-best 79 in 2005 and a hole-in-one in 2006 from a 74-yard uphill lie. “The only thing she regretted was that she wasn’t able to see the ball go in the hole,” her husband said.
Survivors include her daughter, Dana Hull of Ellenwood; her mother, Ada Brooks of Lockerbie, Scotland; a brother, Peter Brooks of Lockerbie; and two grandchildren.
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