Marcia MATTHIES

1935 - 2024

June 23, 1935 - November 18, 2024

Prescott - Marcia Anne Matthies was born Marcia Anne Dietz on June 23, 1935, in Brooklyn, New York, to Robert Dietz and Elisabeth Glenwright Dietz, both from Philadelphia. Growing up with her older brother, Jesse, and sister, Mary Lou, she attended grade school and high school in their hometown of Dumont, New Jersey. She was both a Girls' State Representative and a member of the National Honor Society while a senior high student. But what she recalled most from that period was a summer church camp, where she gave her life to Christ and committed to living out her Christian faith, which remained the central focus of her life. After graduating high school, she moved to Evanston, Illinois, where she studied music education at Northwestern University on a four-year voice scholarship and was part of the Mu Phi Epsilon Music Sorority. During her college years, she met her future husband, Robert William Matthies, when both were involved in the Methodist Student Foundation, and they were later married in 1958. Always unwaveringly supportive of her husband and deeply proud of his family practice medical career, she traveled with him after his medical school graduation to the Hopi and Navajo reservations in northern Arizona, where their daughter, Sharon, was born, then to a mission hospital in Limbe, Haiti, then back to Evanston, where their son, Steve, was added to the family, and later to Boise, Idaho, Spokane, Washington, and finally back to Arizona. Throughout those years and many moves, Marcia also pursued her own career in music, as a public-school elementary music and classroom teacher, as a vocal soloist, and as a choir director in many churches. While in Spokane, Marcia became a financial planning/investment advisor and found joy serving people in that new vocation. She was also so happy and thankful for her children, Sharon and Steve; her granddaughters, Hannah, Christina, and Kathryn; and her great-grandchildren, Hunter, Grace, and Rosie, regaling her friends with stories about them, sharing pictures, and praying for them daily. And she loved her many friends and neighbors, keeping in touch with them through cards, letters, and phone calls over the years, calling them often to get their "news," writing prayer requests for them in her prayer book, and asking God to help them during her daily devotion and prayer time. She loved people, especially her beloved husband, Bob, and her family and close friends; she loved the beauty of the created world; but most of all she loved the God and Father of her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, longing not only to serve Him herself, but to see everyone she met come to know and walk with him, as well. During the final weeks of her earthly life, having increasingly suffered with dementia and physical limitations, now in a skilled nursing facility, she asked for two things especially: a large-print Bible, and the picture of Jesus she always kept in a prominent place in the family's different homes over the years. He was her hope, her strength, and her joy. And while she would want those who remember her to think of the many blessings in her long life, most of all she would want everyone to know and love Jesus Christ, as she sought to do every day since that first commitment to Him as a teenager at her church camp. Marcia passed away on November 18, 2024, having often voiced her readiness to go and be with God, Jesus, and her beloved, Bob, in heaven. A memorial service to celebrate her life will be held on Saturday, April 5, at 3:00pm, at Prescott Church of the Nazarene, 2110 Willow Creek Rd., Prescott, AZ 86301.