Obit: Marden, Lester S.#3 (1877 - 1939)

Contact: Betty Comstock
Email: Comstock@Stateline-ISP.com 

Surnames: Marden

----Source: Judy (Marden) Hansen Scrapbook

Marden, Lester S. (17 AUG 1877 - 9 MAR 1939)

THE WORKER - A Neillsville church was filled to overflowing last Sunday for the funeral of a humble man. The tribute was seemingly greater than the man’s modest estimate of his own importance. He had not attained what the world calls success. He had gained neither fame nor wealth. He was a mechanic, working for a living. To explain his position in the community and the dep regret for his departure, it is necessary to look beyond outward circumstance.
This simple man was known to his small world as Lester Marden. Perhaps something of his standing grew out of his genius for mechanics. He liked to make things fit. Many a housewife in Neillsville has called upon him when something was a misfit, and he would make it right. When he finished, it fitted. From fitting things he developed a sense of the fitness of things. This became part of him.

Mr. Marden made things work. When mechanical equipment was out of order and went on a strike, when work had thus been stopped and the workers were idle, it was a community custom to call for Mr. Marden. By his labors he put the tools and the machines in order, and work started again. Thus he lifted hundreds of miniature depressions. In Neillsville he gave a demonstration, much needed in our days of defeatism, that a good worker does not worry about carefully dividing a limited amount of work, but rather by his efforts creates work for others.

Lester Marden never leaned on a shovel. It was a matter of pride with him that he would not seek Help. Many a man in his situation would have given up the struggle, and would have leaned all his life. For Lester Marden was a mechanic with but one hand. Throughout his days he had only five fingers to work with. What he lacked in fingers he made up for in character. If all Americans of today worked as he did, without leaning at all, the depression would soon become a memory.