Marian Madge Hightshue

Marian Madge King Hightshue was born June 10, 1920 in New Augusta, Indiana to Grace Schwab King and Raymond Lynn King. She died on Monday, December 4, 2017.

In 1938 she graduated from New Augusta High School (now Pike High School). There she met a skinny track and field high jumper from Traders Point, James Edmund Hightshue, whom she would marry in 1944 while he was on a brief vacation from his “government job” in the South Pacific. They remained together for the next 70 years until Eddie’s death in 2014. Madge earned a B.A. in history from Butler University in 1942 and an M.A. in library science in the 1960s.

She worked at the Indianapolis Public Library for more than 25 years and was the first librarian for the original Hussey Memorial Library in Zionsville, Indiana. In 1982 she received the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library Distinguished Service Award. A lifelong member of New Augusta’s Salem Lutheran Church and choir, Madge was also a Girl Scout, a Girl Scout troop leader, nature and bird lover, charter member of the Pike Township Historical Society, and loyal supporter of many charities, especially the Christian Appalachian Project and Doctors Without Borders. She was also a great baker of Christmas cookies (and, yes, enough for the whole class), a pageant costumier for young aspiring teddy bear impersonators, automobile-trip choir director and great proponent of “there is a really good book you ought to read.”

She is survived by all of us who love and will miss her, especially her brother Sherman King (Margie), her daughter Debbie, and her son Doug (Catherine O’Connor).

What can I say,

my dear,

to make

it clear,

I love you madly, madly, Madam Librarian,

Marian

Meredith Willson (1951)