A Call to Serve: Linda Marks '63

In August 1963, a few months after Linda Marks ’63 graduated from Hutchison (when it was still on Union Ave.), the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was leading the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was a tumultuous time, but also an inspirational one, in which great strides in equality were made. By 1968, faith leaders in Memphis were actively brainstorming the idea of creating an organization that would address poverty and racial division. On April 4 of that year, when Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, their work became a priority, and by September, MIFA (Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association) was born. This year marks both the 50th year since Dr. King’s death and MIFA’s 50th year of service.

Although Marks stayed close to Memphis for her college studies—English at Agnes Scott College in Georgia and law at The University of Memphis—much of her career was spent in the Northeast working as a patient rights advocate for people with mental illness. When she returned to Memphis in 2004, she started working at MIFA in their ombudsman program. It was a natural fit for her experience in advocacy.

She now serves as the Inter-Faith and Community Outreach Officer at MIFA. The organization offers a number of programs for seniors and families. The senior programs offer home-delivered meals, free transportation to doctors’ appointments and congregate meal sites, and companionship for seniors living in their homes, and advocacy for those in long-term care facilities. The family programs offer a spectrum of personalized interventions designed to address the vulnerabilities that could lead an individual or family to homelessness.

But Marks always points to the organization’s vision—“Uniting the community through service”—as its defining characteristic. “The service MIFA offers became the vehicle for bringing people together,” Marks said. “The service we offer is vitally important, but underlying all of that is the initial impulse to bring people together who would not ordinarily be together, wouldn’t know each other, wouldn’t realize they had anything in common. We don’t just do things for people and give things to people. We bring the community together.”

This happens most visibly when volunteers deliver Meals on Wheels or spend time with seniors. Marks said she often hears from volunteers about how the work has changed their lives. “They had no idea of the effect it would have on them to know people they would never have come in contact with otherwise,” Marks said. “There are countless stories of friendships that have been made.” Marks’ mother, Frances Marks, who taught Latin at Hutchison and also served as upper school head, often volunteered for MIFA.

Marks said she continues to do this work because it energizes and stimulates her. “The biggest blessing is experiencing, in so many different ways, how connected we all are with each other. Then there’s the importance of stepping outside of the default setting, the comfort zone, and just seeing the bigger world.”

She said the phrase “giving back” is often used when talking about service, but that it implies a one-way relationship. “I prefer something like opening up. The thing that makes us our best selves is when we can open ourselves to see, authentically, how somebody else is living, both what’s different and what we share. And the differences can be wonderful and exciting and interesting or they can be threatening, but the things that we share are the most important.”

To read the full story from the April 2018 edition of the Hutchison School Magazine, click here.