Marion G. Coleman

It may be surprising to learn that a private company would build and fund a YMCA facility on its property just for the benefit of its employees. In the late 1800s the Pennsylvania Railroad did just that, not long after it was declared the largest corporation in the world. The man hired to be the athletic director of the Philadelphia facility was Marion’s father.

The location was at 48th and Parkside Avenue, next to the roundhouse at the railroad’s main yard. John Coleman began his 32-year career there right after the completion of the athletic field and ballpark around 1903. He was also in love at the time; the apple of his eye was Mary Apel, who married him in 1904 and gave birth to Marion in 1905.

Many firstborns develop a passion for teaching because it’s what they’ve been doing with their young siblings for so many years. Her first sister lived just one hour in 1913, but was followed by a brother, John, in 1915 and a sister, Dorothy, in 1918. On his draft card that same year, John listed his job as director of welfare work for the railroad and home was at 5929 Christian Street in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood.

All three children were products of West Philadelphia High School and all three were college graduates. Marion earned her B.S. degree in education from Temple University in 1927. That September she joined the secretarial division of Temple’s business school as an instructor.

She was an Assistant Professor of Business Education in the College of Education after finishing her Master’s degree, sometime after the second World War. In 1950 she assumed supervisory duties over the student teachers. Her sister was quoted as saying that Marion must have taught over 5000 students, and perhaps 10,000. Dorothy said almost all of them got a job in the Philadelphia School District.

After their father’s death in 1951, the single sisters and their mother moved three miles west from their Christian Street home to suburban Upper Darby. Marion’s 43rd year of teaching in 1969 came with a promotion to Associate Professor, but she decided to retire in 1972 after completing her 45th year at Temple.

Marion also spent 30 of those years as a volunteer with the Girl Scouts’ adult scouting program in the city. She was a past president of the Eastern Business Teachers Association and of the Twenty-Five Year Club at Temple. 

The sisters remained together until Maron’s death in 1987. She took her place in Section 8, Lot 12, where her brother, first sister, parents, two sets of aunts and uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents share the plot.