Marsha Anne Bingaman West, 86, was born on January 11, 1938, to Roger and Vivian Turner Bingaman in Sacramento, California. Marsha passed from this earthly home on November 7, 2024, at the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) Motherhouse in Monroe, Michigan, where she was an Associate. Marsha is preceded in death by her husband, Don, her parents, her in-laws Phyllis Elizabeth Beeman West and Delmas Lynwood West, and her sisters-in-law, Linda West and Kathleen (Kay) Dawley.
After graduating from Pierce High School in Arbuckle, California, Marsha married Donald West on February 26th, 1956, in a church adorned with almond blossoms. They attended the University of California at Davis. After a stint in the California National Guard, Don farmed and worked at the Kordite plastic factory before joining Marsha in beginning their teaching careers.
They started with jobs in different locations, beginning at Dixon High School, but in 1974, they found jobs together in Forks, Washington, and Marsha spent 27 years teaching English at Forks High School while Don taught Ag shop. Marsha was a leader in her profession, and Gonzaga University’s Teacher of the Year for the Pacific Northwest for 1988, as well as Washington State Teacher of the Year for a previous year..
Their beloved parish, St. Anne’s, where Marsha taught CCD classes and was a Pastoral Associate, running services when priests weren’t available, led her through some of her happiest and darkest times. Being a confidant to many young people put Marsha in the middle of the Catholic Church abuse crisis. As a teacher, she was often a person to whom young people came for help, and this took a toll on Marsha’s heart as she helped the children seek justice. Thankfully, she received excellent therapy, including art therapy, which helped heal the immediate wounds of that difficult time and led Marsha to discover a previously hidden talent for creating art.
Marsha traveled to Vermont for a summer to attend Middlebury Breadloaf School of English. She did a lot of writing and thought about becoming a professional writer. She’d been a reporter for a newspaper in Williams, California, before. But she decided against finishing her master’s program because, as she said then, “Everything I had to say, I was saying in the context of my relationships with my friends and family.”
Marsha and Don have shared a hobby for several years: showing Irish Setters, winning awards, and having a great time traveling with their beautiful dogs.
Toward the end of Marsha’s career, Forks High School joined the Concord Consortium, a visionary group that harnesses the possibilities of the burgeoning internet for educational purposes. They encouraged quality online teaching through Virtual High School long before most other high schools had considered it. They connected students with qualified teachers nationwide, making it possible for even tiny, rural schools to have a huge catalog of Advanced Placement classes available, thus offering the young people of Forks possibilities they’d never had before without leaving home. Marsha wrote the nation’s first online AP English curriculum, with a high rate of students passing the challenging exam. She spoke to a national convention of all fifty state governors in Washington, DC, on the benefits of online education for rural districts. Marsha’s online work expanded to include private consulting. She led the dream teacher’s life, sometimes watching the fall leaves change color in New England while visiting her daughter Pam and spending a few hours daily facilitating businesspeople in India learning English online to fund her travels.
Then, in March 2009, Don died, an early victim of the swine flu epidemic, and Marsha’s life forever changed. Her heart broke at the loss of her beloved, but as she healed, she had a journey of realization. She’d always defined her life as a mother and a wife, and now the world and its possibilities stood wide open to her as never before. She had never considered leaving her home in the rainforest, but she began thinking about becoming a nun and researching groups of sisters who lead lives of service.
Marsha accepted an invitation to a six-month Monastic Immersion Experience at Visitation Monastery in North Minneapolis, and it was like no life experience she’d had before. The nuns live in an area known for gang violence and poverty, just a ten-minute drive from where George Floyd would be killed, but they hang a windsock on the front porch as a signal to the people of the neighborhood that they’re welcome to come inside to find acceptance, maybe a sandwich, a bus pass, a hug, a prayer, help with homework, whatever the sisters can offer them. They are part of the neighborhood and “a place of delight and rest” in Salesian spirituality. Kids from the local high school come to volunteer, neighbors come by to show off new babies, Mass is held regularly in the living room, and it’s a busy place. An accessory wing, St. Jane’s House, hosts groups like From Death to Life, a healing group begun by mothers whose children were involved in homicide, both as victims and as killers, after one mother experienced God’s radical grace in being able to forgive, reconcile, and live with the young man who murdered her son. Marsha was amazed by what she experienced in this place and wished she could stay forever, but her six months ended, and she returned home to Forks.
Eventually, the IHMs invited Marsha to Monroe, Michigan, for a trial period. Marsha lived in Norman Towers as she grew into her full vocation as an Associate member. She led communion services for those unable to get to church services. Marsha made time for her art and had a showing of her work in the convent gallery. After closing her consulting business, she used her experience to help A Nun’s Life online ministry. Marsha was happy to be able to live out her final years surrounded by the women of the IHM and their stories. Most, like her, had lived full professional lives before coming to the Motherhouse in their old age. Many had lived heroic lives, saving babies at the fall of Saigon and the like, and here they were now, in Monroe, MI, protecting the world with their prayers.
Marsha is survived by her daughters Pamela West and Donna Lynne West Moreno; her son David West (MaryBeth) and her foster son Charlie MacLaren (Justis); her grandchildren David (Kristina), Steven (Natalie), Carissa (Ianto), Elizabeth, Fog, Katie (Misha), Genny, and Ali, and eight great-grandchildren.