Marie Catlin Larrabee-Stoops, age 81, of Oshkosh, departed this life peacefully early Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at the Evergreen Retirement Community. She was born September 7, 1925, in Peterborough, New Hampshire, the daughter of Edward Noble Larrabee and Emma Marie (Stohn) Larrabee. She graduated from Peterborough High School in 1943 and worked with her father on the family poultry breeding farm, and attended secretarial school in Boston.

Marie had an extensive career as a technical secretary. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, she worked at the Harvard Observatory under Harlow Shapley and two other astronomers. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she edited and typed theses and technical treatises for graduate students, scientists, and engineers. Later, after several productive years with the acoustics firm Boldt Baranek and Newman, she was promoted to Office Manager. Then, in recognition of her expertise, she was transferred to the Seattle area to work for her employer on a classified Navy contract at the Bremerton Navy Yard. She lived in a rented cabin on Bainbridge Island, overlooking Puget Sound. When the Navy contract ended, Marie felt such an affinity for the scenic island and its Scandinavian inhabitants that she decided to stay, becoming a legal secretary in Seattle and commuting by ferry. She was a founding member of a non-smokers rights group and designed their logo, COUGH – Choking Odors Undermine Good Health. Their efforts soon limited smokers to one room on each ferry. Marie met a favorite author, Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the ferry. She helped organize an amateur opera company on the island and assisted in their productions.

Marie loved the outdoors. While at MIT she join the Sub Sig Outing Club and with them hiked, climbed, and skied in the New England mountains and attended concerts at the Tanglewood Music Center in western Massachusetts. Folk music and dancing gave her joy. A highlight of her Cambridge years was the time when she used a lunch break to drop into the Unitarian Church on Harvard Square where Albert Schweitzer and E Power Biggs were having an impromptu four hands (and feet) jam session on the great organ. Another time, in Boston, she was on crutches recovering from a skiing injury when she observed visiting Winston Churchill, with cigar and cane, exiting a limousine. When he saw her, he raised his cane and shook it in salute. Marie sang alto in the MIT Choral Society and toured Germany with them. Afterward, she visited family friends in Germany who had been in the anti-Nazi underground, then, in a rented VW, toured most of Western Europe alone. In Norway she sojourned with friends before embarking for England to catch her ship home.

Marie studied some piano and violin, using an instrument made by her great grandfather, but she most appreciated the efforts of others. While living in the Northwest, she vacationed in Japan with a Japanese-speaking former co-worker and friend from her Cambridge days, whom she had taught to drive. Later in Colorado she visited that friend, by then a licensed pilot, who persuaded her to take flight lessons. Back east, with cost doubled, unfamiliar controls, and indifferent instruction, she ended her quest for a license, but not her love of flight.

Marie's cheerful, outgoing personality attracted many durable friendships, including one with a world-class husband-and-wife violin-piano due, another with a prominent engineer and inventor from her MIT days. In 1975, she gave up her life in the Northwest and returned to Peterborough to care for her aging parents. Her father died in 1976, her mother in 1995 at the age of 100. During the late '70's, she and a friend started Peterborough's Hospice. In 1991, she married Donald Stoops, inherited 8 children and their offspring who welcomed her into the family. With her husband, she continued her interest in the outdoors and aviation, hiked on nearby mountain trails and attended EAA's Airventure. She sang in the Monadnock Chorus, designed their programs, toured with them in Europe, did custom typing as a home business, worked as a legal secretary, volunteered for a conservation education organization, for a local adult day care center, and for the Peterborough Historical Society. In 2002, she and Donald moved to Wisconsin to be near her sister in Madison, selecting Evergreen over eldercare facilities there. She joined the Evergreen Singers and volunteered at Evergreen's Manor Mart.

Marie was brought up in the New England Unitarian tradition, but from a young age apparently was ecumenically inclined, and occasionally attended church with Catholic and Episcopalian friends. As an adult, the appeal of Quaker simplicity sometimes led her to join the large Cambridge Meeting in worship. Since coming to Oshkosh, Marie, with Donald, became a member of the Oshkosh Quaker meeting.

Survivors include her husband of 26 years, Donald Stoops; sister, Janet L. (Thomas) Jones of Madison, WI; brother, Ralph S. (Barbara) Larrabee of Enterprise, AL; nephews, Mark and David Larrabee, Bruce and Alan Jones; and niece, Carol Marie Jones.

A service, including a brief Quaker medication, to celebrate Marie's life will be held in the Chapel at Evergreen Manor on North Westfield Street at 3:00 P.M. on Wednesday, June 6, 2007. Contributions in her name may be made to the Evergreen Care Assurance Fund or the Lewy Body Dementia Association.

Her husband's and her family's profound thanks go to the dedicated Evergreen staff for the sympathetic, loving care they gave this very special lady.