Just two hours into her blind date, Marion Louise Butler found herself with a marriage proposal. “I was so overwhelmed. I saw a very beautiful woman and I just liked her immediately,” said Robert Moe, her blind date in 1946 who became her husband two years later. Marion Moe, 80, formerly of Lake Forest, an elementary- school teacher and longtime volunteer at children’s shelters, died Sunday, Jan. 4, at St. Vincent’s Nursing Home in New Jersey of vascular dementia. Born and raised in Belleville, N.J., Mrs. Moe graduated from Newark State Teachers College in New Jersey in 1944. She taught kindergarten through 4th grade pupils for five years. She met her husband one month after he was discharged from the Marines. Mrs. Moe stopped teaching in 1949 to raise their three children. She volunteered to teach Catholic education classes to children and volunteered at a children’s shelter in Belleville. An accomplished classical pianist, she taught music classes and basic education classes to the abandoned children there, teaching some for years, her husband said. The couple moved to Lake Forest in 1970, where she volunteered twice a week at a shelter in Waukegan and taught Catholic curriculum classes. She especially enjoyed teaching severely disadvantaged or handicapped children, as well as exceptionally talented children, her husband said. “She felt that both sides of the scale needed her help,” her husband said. Mrs. Moe and her family moved to Glen Ridge, N.J., in 1978, where she continued teaching on a volunteer basis, retiring in 1994. Besides her husband, survivors include two sons, Robert and Paul; a daughter, Virginia Floss; and five grandchildren. Services have been held.
