Elizabeth Eloise McCrum Bianchi Marx 

With grace and courage Elizabeth Eloise McCrum Bianchi 
Marx came to the end of her life in the early morning of 
November 2nd, 2009 in Santa Rosa, California. Born in St. 
Regis, Montana August 12th, 1918 to school teacher Robert 
McCrum and his wife Elizabeth, she was the third of four 
children who grew up in Huntington, Indiana. Toward the 
end of the Great Depression, with the encouragement of her 
family, she went away to college where she worked in the 
cafeteria to pay her way. During the Second World War she 
worked as secretary to the War Labor Board in Chicago 
where she met her first husband, Renzo Bianchi. They 
settled in Northfield, Minnesota after the war where Renzo 
taught Economics as Chairman of the Department at Carlton 
College. There they raised their two children, Douglas and 
Susan. Upon Renzo's death and honoring his desire that his 
children learn Italian and be exposed to the culture of 
his native Tuscany, she took the children, then nine and 
twelve years old, to Florence with her sister, Marianna, 
also a recent widow with two children. In 1960 she 
returned to the U.S. and settled in San Francisco where 
the children went to high school and she went back to work 
as a Field Examiner for the National Labor Relations 
Board. At the Board, she met her second husband, Herman 
Marx, an Administrative Law Judge. They retired to Oakmont 
in Santa Rosa. She lived her last years at Avalon at Brush 
Creek in Santa Rosa. She is survived by her son, Douglas 
Bianchi, her daughter, Susan Bianchi Porter, her 
grandchildren, Giorgio, Malaika, Trek, and Trace, and her 
great grandson Jack Renzo and many nieces and nephews and 
extended family who admired and loved her. She believed 
that courage and kindness were the virtues that included 
all others. Her courage, her kindness, her broad intellect 
and curiosity, and her independence and adventurous life 
continue to inspire her family and all who knew her. 
Memorial contributions, great or small, may be made to the 
body of Human knowledge and creativity, and for the care 
and preservation of the Humans who are its source. 

Published in San Francisco Chronicle on November 15, 2009