Marjorie Muth

Honored November, 2004

Marjorie Muth

When their first son, Budge, was born to Marjorie and Henry Muth, they were as thrilled as any other parents. Not until a second son came did they see that there was a sharp difference between the learning capability of the boys. They had Budge tested. The diagnosis: "developmentally disabled."

There were no public educational opportunities for the retarded in the late 1940s, so Marjorie and her husband enrolled Budge in a private school. To pay for it, she did something she had vowed not to do: She became a teacher. "I'll never teach!" she had said upon graduating from Rockford College in Illinois and Kansas University, with a major in English. But her mother had some good advice: "You never know when you'll need to go to work"—so Marjorie also got a minor in education.