Marian Aves Humes

1937 - 2025

Marian Aves Humes
June 1, 1937 - September 12, 2025
Marian Humes (neé Harbordt), an artist, explorer, chef, athlete, mother, wife, and teacher who forged deep friendships in communities that stretched from Michigan to Texas, California, and Florida, passed away on September 12 in Tampa, Florida, while surrounded by her family. She was 88 years old.
Marian was born in 1937 in Chicago, IL, the younger of two children, and grew up in Greenville, MI. Some of her fondest memories of Greenville revolved around Baldwin Lake, coaxing horses from the fields for impromptu rides, and the tight-knit community that her family was a part of. She attended Michigan State University, where she met her future husband, Dave Humes of Lansing, MI, while she completed a degree in Education. Her three sons, Steve (Leigh Humes, neé Schaferman), Tom (Lisa Humes, neé Leger, d.), and Jim (Jillian Rudman), were born in Michigan before the family moved to Austin, TX in 1968, and then settled in San Antonio, TX the following year.
In addition to raising her three boys, she found joy as a jeweler and an accomplished practitioner of brush painting. She was an avid tennis player and an expert golfer, winning several individual and couples (with Dave) titles at Canyon Creek and Dominion Country Clubs. She was at the center of several neighborhood gatherings, including a Christmas Eve party she and Dave hosted, and a New Year's Day celebration with several families, which became some of the year's most anticipated events. During the 1980's she immersed herself in nutrition, becoming an accomplished macrobiotic chef and cooking class instructor. The shape of her life was defined by a bottomless sense of curiosity that sent her traveling through Korea and Japan, trekking through Central America with her intrepid travel partners, Marilyn and Darlene, and spending a year in Santa Cruz to immerse herself in the rhythms of California. She maintained a meditation practice, a devotion to the Japanese tea ceremony, and was a celebrated brush chi-gong artist.
When Dave retired, he and Marian moved to Tampa, FL, to be closer to Steve and Leigh. Marian spent the last nine years building new friendships and forging a special relationship with Leigh around their shared love of music. Over the last years, Marian's adventures were curtailed by the progress of Alzheimer's disease. Still, her love of being with family, her spirit of play, and her ability to dance to whatever music was playing never left her. Her smile never left her, along with the brightness of her soul.
Marian was preceded in death by Dave, her husband of 64 years, her brother, George "Bud" Herman Harbordt III, and her parents, George Herman Harbordt, Jr, and Pearl "Scotty" Harbordt. She will be greatly missed by her children and their spouses; her grandchildren Sera Humes, Nicholas Humes, and Devon Humes; family members, Dr. Rick and Carmen Humes, Diane Humes Treiman and Dr. Allen Treiman, David Ponitz, Cathy Ponitz and John Rego, and David Poe; a large extended family; the Sandman Street and Harmony Hills neighbors; and by countless friends from every chapter of her life.