The Academy family recently lost long-serving volunteer archivist Jerry Marra. Jerry passed away unexpectedly on March 20, 2024. He was 68 years old.
Born in Freeport, New York, Jerry was a hard-working student and standout athlete who set high school records in track. After graduating from Grove City College in Pennsylvania, Jerry went on to earn his M.S. in Chemical Engineering at Clemson University in 1979. In 1990, Jerry, his wife Barb, and three children, moved to Madison, where he took a job at Kraft Foods/Oscar Mayer until he retired in 2012. A few years later, Jerry joined the Wisconsin Academy as volunteer archivist, often joking to Barb as he ran out the door for his part-time shift, “Gotta go to work!”
Emerging only to share a fascinating bit of correspondence with another state Academy or a late-Seventies era photograph of an Academy Fellow sporting a walrus mustache, Jerry spent much of the 2010s in the musty basement of the Academy’s Steenbock Building at 1922 University Avenue. Working in his tiny janitor’s closet of an office, Jerry diligently rifled through decades of financial records, researched the provenance of various Academy artifacts and artworks, and brought order to the haphazard stacks of Wisconsin Academy publications from across the ages.
Jerry loved sports and was the quintessential team player, accepting tasks with good humor and grace. He would even mow the Academy lawn with an antiquated push mower. All the staff loved Jerry, not only for his sunny disposition but also for his genuine interest in and knowledge of Academy history. These traits would all be put to the test in the run up to the Academy’s 150th anniversary in 2020. The Watrous Gallery’s “Collections & Connections,” the special double issue of Wisconsin People & Ideas, and the timeline of Academy history were all dependent on Jerry’s contributions, which were essential to helping people connect with the Academy, to understand what the Academy is and who we are.
Jerry Marra is one of us, and he will be missed.
