Marcia SORISI (Miller)

Marcia’s Autobiography (2021)

The past 60 (has it been that long?) years have been good to me. I am still married to my first love whom I met as a freshman in college. We have been lucky growing together, sharing interests, learning, making good friends and raising three children (two girls and a boy) to become responsible adults. We have one grandchild who has now started high school. We have no family members still living in Westport but have two cousins still in Connecticut—one in Newtown and one in Norwalk. My sister lives in California with her family but we are all still in touch with each other and the next generations thanks to Zoom.

Work/Career: I graduated from Tufts in 3-1/2 years and married Peter, my husband, before my last semester. I worked at Tufts Medical school until my first daughter was born. We bought our first and only house in Lexington, MA and put on an addition as our family grew.

Once my children were in school, I looked for a job. I was paralyzed for a while because I thought that whatever I chose would be it for the rest of my life. Finally a friend hired me to be office manager for a solar energy company. Besides running the office, I ended up doing some engineering, electronic packaging and design and technical writing. When the company was acquired and moved to New Jersey, I started my own business doing market consulting, technical documentation, graphic design and websites. I became President of a group of woman business owners, was elected to go to a Small Business White House conference in Washington, got some Small Business awards and served on a Citizens Advisory Committee for the state of Massachusetts. I became active in a number of women’s entrepreneurial organizations. As my business services became commoditized, I joined Metabolix as Director of Marketing. The company made plastic from metabolically engineered bacteria. After working alone for so long, it was good to be working with a team of people growing a new business. Ultimately, the company went public. I left and joined an environmental company as Director of Business Development until I retired. As I look back, work seems the least interesting part of my life although I learned a lot.

My life hasn’t been without its difficulties. I think we have all been through tough moments. But I have been resilient. Losing both parents while still very young was hard. Having to balance being responsible as an older sister with wanting to be as free as a lot of my friends were was hard. Not having a lot of money in a town like Westport was tough as well. But I had a wonderful family with aunts

and uncles who cared about my sister and me even though I did not have many adults to talk with on a daily basis except for teachers. On the other hand, losing parents so early meant not having to deal with issues of their growing old, which I expect many of you did. Not a tradeoff I would have chosen, though. I did lose my aunts to ovarian cancer, the same as my mother. Helping them at the end was heartbreaking but at least I was able to provide support during those horrible times.

I have become more “bionic” with two partial shoulder replacements and an ankle replacement. But they keep me going and active and out of pain.

As someone once said “You are known by the company you keep”. Looking back, I feel that the people I have as friends and my family are the most important part of my life. I feel fortunate to still be here surrounded by the people who share this journey with me. Numerous interests keep me busy: music (especially opera), designing and making jewelry (really an excuse to buy tools), birding (a course in ornithology at Tufts turned into a life course which has taken me places like Nepal which I would not have seen otherwise) collecting Southwestern pottery (and making good friends among Hopi, Navajo and San Ildefonso people), good food, and travel although it’s been curtailed for now. Besides all of the usual volunteer things one does with young children (PTA, Scouting etc.) I did a lot of other volunteering in the past as well. Currently, I am on the New England Committee for the Metropolitan Opera tryouts. It has been wonderful to help young singers as they progress with their careers.

I haven’t been in touch with a lot of classmates but have enjoyed seeing everyone when we get together for reunions. I had a wonderful surprise when Suzy Ogilvy Ochs called to wish me a happy birthday last July. I know we have lost a number of classmates but I look forward to seeing those of us who can still get together on our Zoom call. I hope you have had good things happen in your lives and that we weather the time we have left filled with activities and people we love and continue on with humor and good grace.