Marlene Broad

It is with the heaviest of hearts, bittersweet relief, and an admittedly long obituary that we say goodbye to Marlene Louise (Braun) Broad, age 84, who died on December 17, 2024. Marlene, known by many as 'Gammie', led a rich, complex life, but for the last many months experienced pain from intensifying health problems. For almost 35 years after first being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1991, Marlene expressed joie de vivre. She lived a life overflowing with adventure, love, and a deep reverence for the human experience. Her skepticism about the afterlife motivated her to squeeze every drop out of her time on Earth until her body finally overwhelmed her ability to connect with those around her.

Until age 7, Marlene lived in Akron, Ohio, where her father, Mitchell Braun, worked in the Firestone tire factory and her mother, Sally (Israel) Braun, cut hair to make ends meet for a family of six. Marlene was the oldest and is survived by her sister Jackie (Kaagan), and brothers, Jeff (Braun) and Ted (Braun), all of whom she remained closely bonded with until her last days. In 1947, after yet another snowstorm and round of colds and coughs, the family piled into their station wagon to escape the gray, factory life of Ohio for the sun and beaches of Florida, settling in Miami Shores. In Miami Marlene developed lifelong friendships. She established her core identity as a Miami Edison High School 'Red Raider' and then a University of Florida Gator, remaining inseparable from her close high school and college friends for over 60 years. As a nursing student at University of Florida, she met Norman. They married in 1965 and raised two children, Kenny and Elaine, living first in Los Angeles, California, then moving back to South Florida in 1968. Married for 25 years, they remained close throughout their lives.

Marlene was raised in modest circumstances by a warm and fearless jokester of a father, and a loving mother with 'old country' traditions from her upbringing in Yugoslavia. Marlene, as the first born, was piled with heaps of responsibility at an early age but also given a lot of freedom. Years before it was legal for her to drive, her parents sat her on a phone book so that she could see over the steering wheel and sent her around town to pick up her siblings, do household errands, and get to her after school jobs, including operating the switchboard at the Gould Hotel in Sunny Isles Beach where her father worked (and occasionally siphoning tips away from the staff by delivering ice buckets to guests). Even during her professional career in health care, Marlene had side hustles, including as a model for Dentyne chewing gum ads to help pay for college, and later making consistent income in the screen actors guild doing Joy dishwasher commercials for Proctor & Gamble. Still today, you can see her iconic smile, larger than life, on the side of Miami-Dade County buses and on billboard ads for an insurance company alongside Magic Johnson, with whom she did many photo shoots well into her 70s.



Marlene's upbringing gave her a confidence that nothing was impossible, and rules were malleable. She had a reverence for scrappy fortitude and a confidence in her own values. With her children, she followed her parents' approach and employed the increasingly rare free-range approach to supervision. Her loving, warm, empathetic side was matched with a low tolerance for complainers, and a toughness and drive to right what she believed were wrongs, at both personal and societal scales. She could shower you with praise and biting criticism in one fell swoop, driven by love and desire to fortify you for what life might dole out. (Just ask her son-in-law, Peter Manno, and daughter-in-law, Amy Clement, both of whom she loved dearly, for details!)

Marlene's ability to make lasting connections with people from diverse backgrounds speak to her central identity, that of a caretaker. Beginning her career in the 1960's as a Dade County public health nurse, her early assignment was to go door to door in neighborhoods that lacked access to basic health care. She became fascinated and energized by the myriad ways that people lived (it was a great job for a nosy person, she noted). Embedded in the public health system, she was appalled by the horrific circumstances of unequal access to and denial of treatment. She railed against the ways in which the medical system shamed, and even deceived communities of people based on the color of their skin or their country of origin.

Exasperated by her American experience, in 1963 she sent an application to Queen Charlotte's maternity hospital in London, England, and as an adventurous 20-something, took off for a new life to find her healthcare calling as a nurse midwife. Bicycling with her 'torch' to remote villages to deliver babies in the Quonset huts left from World War II, she found it was nothing short of magic to be part of bringing life to this earth. She delivered thousands of healthy babies over more than three decades. She insists that the first season of 'Call the Midwife' perfectly captured the life she led in England (although she deemed subsequent seasons "hokey and dumb.") By her own account, she never had a bad day at work as a nurse midwife, awed to be a part of the lifegiving ritual.



She had many adventures gallivanting around Europe as a single nurse, such as going on weekend ski trips to Austria with money she had squirreled away. The dreary British weather drove her to study midwifery and take French lessons in Montpellier, France, where she learned to proudly proclaim: Je suis sage-femme. Her adventures in Europe ended when the call to start a family of her own became too strong to ignore, coming in the form of letters from her father and a memorable late-night phone call from the smitten (and perhaps inebriated) Norman, asking her to "Please come home."

Back in the US, Marlene joined a nurse midwifery service at Miami's public hospital, Jackson Memorial, along with a band of fifteen innovative, dedicated, colleagues. This service provided sorely needed pre-natal and delivery care to those who could not afford it. The team delivered as many as 16,000 babies in one year, sometimes in the hallways of the hospital. When waves of Cuban and Haitian immigrants began arriving in South Florida, Marlene gained yet another perspective on what it means to be a citizen in the U.S.. Her later volunteer work took her to over a dozen countries with formal medical corps. Marlene also went on informal aid trips abroad. Upon landing, she would search phonebooks to find midwifery services and then to introduce herself. She formed quick and lasting bonds with these practitioners, as they shared tricks of the trade, recounted chilling stories of caesarians being done using only acupuncture, and describing other non-western approaches to health and wellbeing that stretched her imagination.

After retiring, Marlene volunteered with many organizations, including Refugee Assistance Alliance, which helped resettle refugees from war torn areas in South Florida. Often, she worked with the women to access healthcare, even accompanying them to doctor's appointments. She never lost sight of her parents' own immigrant roots-evident in her cooking of tasty Sephardic dishes served side by side with Julia Child recipes she had mastered-or of the debt owed to the country that gave her family so much.

Marlene's passion for healing and connecting with people was passed on to her kids. Her daughter, Elaine, became a physician, and her son, Kenny, was drawn to study human behavior as an anthropologist. Throughout her life, Marlene balanced devotion to her family and community with adventure, taking every opportunity to travel and see the world, and making it to nearly every continent. When Nixon opened China for trade and tourism in the 1970's, she claims to have been one of the first Americans to visit. She returned from her voyages with artistic treasures that adorned (and cluttered) every home she lived in. In Spring 2024, despite her ongoing health challenges, she went for several weeks to Japan, where she devoured the culture and food, eating freshly made noodles at nearly every meal.

Never one for prescribed spirituality, Marlene did have deep faith. Her religion was her family and friends, and her love language was home cooked food. Her holiest of holidays was Thanksgiving, and her most dedicated acolytes were her grandkids, Jasper (21), Casey (18), Lincoln (17), and Jesse (15), all of whom grew up a short walk away from her house, which was their second, albeit preferred, home. She was a fifth parent, mentor, fan club, travel companion, private nurse, and trusted confidant to all the grandkids from the day they were born. The kids helped care for her as she grew weak, and she expressed deep pride in knowing that she was leaving a legacy of grandchildren with well-aligned moral compasses, and warmth and sweetness to share. She willed herself to make it to this year's Thanksgiving table, surrounded by generations of people who loved her, and she declined rapidly not long afterwards. This last hurrah topped off three intense months of amazing goodbyes to dear friends and family who came from all corners, day in and day out, to send her off. In these final months, she often repeated how she did not feel unlucky to be dying but so lucky to have been alive. One day, while surrounded by adoring grandkids, she blurted out with a smile, "If this is dying, it's not bad at all!" The larger-than-life role she played in their lives will continue to grow.

Marlene's intensity was always calmed on the water. She was a proud angler and cold beer drinker. A plaque in her honor will be placed at Neptune Memorial Reef, an underwater memorial park just over 3 miles off Miami's coast, and her ashes scattered in the sea. (Her memorial is close to that of her longtime hero, Julia Child!) We encourage you to take a dip in the ocean and think about Marlene and how fortunate we are to have had her in our lives.

Finally, we can't emphasize enough how immensely grateful and humbled our family is by all the support we received from so many of you, and the decades of care she received from medical professionals and laypersons who treated her like a family member, revealing to us what true love and friendship is and how it plays out in the heaviest of moments. Please know that we are here if you ever need us.

- In lieu of flowers, please consider donating or volunteering with:

- Refugee Assistance Alliance: https://www.refugeeassistancealliance.org

- Lotus House: https://lotushouse.org

- Americans for Immigrant Justice: https://aijustice.org

- We will be having an open house to stop and have a bite, something to drink, and share a Marlene story on Saturday, December 21 from 11am - 5pm at: 2810 Crystal Court, Miami, FL 33133

- A ceremony scattering the ashes at sea will take place at a later date.

-------------------------------------------

Remember Me

To the living, I am gone.

To the sorrowful, I will never return.

To the angry, I was cheated.

But to the happy, I am at peace.

And to the faithful, I have never left.

I cannot speak, but I can listen.

I cannot be seen, but I can be heard.

So as you stand upon the shore, gazing at a beautiful sea, remember me.

As you look upon a flower and admire its simplicity, remember me.

Remember in your hearts, your thoughts and your memories of the times

we loved, the times we cried, the times we fought, the times we laughed.

For if you always think of me, I will never have gone."

-Rainer Maria Rilke

----------------------------