MARKS, MIRIAM

Executive Secretary of the National Office of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) in Washington, DC, 1935–1960; b. Tacoma, Washington, April 26, 1890; d. Apalachicola, July 18, 1961. The daughter of Charles and Anna Ryan Marks, she grew up in Apalachicola, Florida, and attended Florida College for Women. After a year of study at Columbia University in 1919, she supervised art for the public schools of Garland County, Arkansas (1920–23). Upon graduating from the National Catholic School of Social Service in Washington, DC in 1926, Marks began social work in Newark and Paterson, New Jersey. It was while working as an editor for St. Anthony's Guild in Paterson that she made the acquaintance of Father Edwin o'hara, then working with the Rural Life Bureau of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference. When O'Hara became bishop of Great Falls, Montana, he asked Marks to organize the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) in his diocese, and between 1931 and 1933 Marks developed CCD programs for three other dioceses. When the U.S. bishops established the National Office of the CCD in Washington, O'Hara, in his capacity of episcopal chairman, named Marks executive secretary, a position she held for 25 years. In that capacity Marks organized the Confraternity in 72 dioceses in the United States and Canada. She contributed essays to magazines, directed the CCD Office of Publications, and organized and spoke at various national conventions of the CCD. She taught at St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana in the summers of 1938, 1939, and 1943, and at the Catholic University of America in 1949 and 1950. She was awarded the Papal Medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, in October of 1937. Marks retired in 1960 and died at her home in Apalachicola on July 18, 1961. A plaque in Memorial Hall at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, commemorates her work with the CCD.

Bibliography: CCD Files in the Archives of the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC; The Confraternity Comes of Age: A Historical Symposium (Paterson, NJ 1956).

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