Marjorie Ellen Baer

BAER, Marjorie Ellen Marjorie Baer passed away peacefully Saturday, October 6, at her home in Berkeley in the company of close friends and family. Marjorie was born on New Year's Eve, 1953, to Max and Alice Baer and grew up in North Hollywood, California. She graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz and then went to graduate school in American Studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She worked for the Department of the Interior on a series of projects designed to develop culturally sensitive reuse of historical structures, including a project at the Laguna pueblo in New Mexico. She settled in the Bay Area and began a long and productive career as an editor, working her way up from copy editor to senior executive editor at Peachpit Press in Berkeley. She was known there for her ability to produce excellent books in spite of heavy workloads, impossible deadlines, and recalcitrant authors. She was particularly revered for devotion to mentoring junior editorial staff and, as acquisitions editor, for bringing a wide range of books into the catalog. She was a voracious reader and an intellectual without pretense. She was active in her book group for 16 years until brain cancer robbed her of the ability to read. She was also a talented artist and a fine cook. Her home was a model of simplicity, dominated by books, paintings, and always one or more cats. Perhaps most important, she was a loyal and devoted friend. She is greatly missed by a remarkably wide and diverse circle, some going back many years, others of more recent acquaintance. She is survived by her brother Philip and his wife, Joyce; her brother Tom and his wife, Susan White, and their daughters, Lola and Cecilia; and her sister Kathryn and her husband, Jesse McCorry. All are diminished by her death, but enriched by the legacy of her memory. A memorial will be held in Berkeley at a time and date to be determined shortly. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Marjorie Baer Scholarship for Editorial Excellence at www.peachpit.com/MEBScholarshipFund, and the National Brain Tumor Foundation.