Jon and I were in communication in mid January. He asked if my husband John and I could visit him in Palm Harbor, Florida. We tentatively set a date for February 12th. On January 23rd, he texted that he had an emergency operation and was in the hospital, and that Tova, his wife, was in hospice care. Tina, Tova's daughter who we met at our last reunion, contacted me on February 2nd to say Jon was in ICU but was improving. On February 11th, Tina wrote to me to say he was disappointed that we could not get together as he was stil in the hospital.. I texted her back and she told me on February 13th that she would for send him our love and prayers. So sorry to see the Facebook post and then Gail's email. He will be greatly missed!
Jon and I became friends after we retired more than we had been in high school. He had lived near Kensington and visited when he was in the area. My neighbor and Jon were linked through the A.C.T. I've learned more about his extraordinary accomplishments in these last few years than I had known before. I loved the image he posted with Meryl Streep when this sIte went up. He was extraordinary. Such a loss.
Jon Marks was one of my really good friends in high school (I had two groups of friends, one in Clifton, one in Avondale). He, Jeff Rosen, and I often got together on Saturdays at my house or Jeff's on Rose Hill Avenue (for some reason, I don't think I was ever at Jonny's) to create crazy scenarios on the tape recorder with sound effects and music, or otherwise play games, play opera recordings, or just get into creative mischief. It was one such Saturday when my father took the three of us to the City Dump and Incinerator for a memorable visit (described at Post #6020, 5-11-2022, herein).
But it is only now, as I reflect on the past, that I realize, during the many times that he and I worked together on theatrical events at Walnut Hills High, Jon wrote most of the lines that I later enacted on stage. The first of these was our 8th-grade Latin project for Miss Ewald's class, performed by many of our classmates, a parody of Homer's Odyssey ("Ulysses") that we called "Useless." Written largely by Jon Marks and Jeff Rosen, with a little help from me ("little" is the operative word here), it was performed one morning in the Small Auditorium for an audience of Latin students (Latin teacher Laura Rife walked out on it), and later on in a second performance in a classroom in the new Annex. Jonny and Jeff assigned me the lead role of Useless, on his way home from Toy to Mythica, after the Greek wars. (It was the first of my many occasions to appear in a toga.) Later, for "Peanuts, '62," Jon and I (and perhaps someone else) met at Teedee Spelman's apartment to write the plot and lines for the "continuity." Again, I had a lead role, as millionaire "K. Farley Dingwipe," delivering Jon's lines; these concluded with me being carried off stage in the arms of Frannie Grace (!). (There are a couple of views of these things, including one of Jon, Teedee, and me backstage after the show, on my Profile -- photos 5, 6, 7, 10, and 11.) And yet again, in the "Walnuts of 1964," Jon was a major writer and coordinator of the four separate plots that the show contained, along with (again) me, Dale Gieringer, and a couple others (our humor ran pretty much to puns in those days)); Jon also largely directed the show, while Chuck Cole was the overall coordinator. Jonny wrote for me the memorable campaign speech of Senator Stephen Yunk of Ohio (Act IV), said lines being a parody of a famous Crest Toothpaste commercial of the period: "[My opponent] Fest has been shown to be a defective delay-intentive dentist who can be of diminuitive valor when confused in a sententiously applied program of moral highness and regulatory Presidential care."
But there were other events as well: Jonny and I performed together in the Junior Class play, Arsenic and Old Lace, he as Jonathan Brewster (the Boris Karloff role) and I as Teddy Roosevelt Brewster; and he was my editor at The Chatterbox our Senior year when he asked me to direct the humor column (there were several of us writers for it), "Notes from the Padded Cell." (His father, Grauman Marks, took lots of pictures of "Useless" and Arsenic and Old Lace and distributed them to the participants.) And then there was the Summer Opera at the Zoo: although I just ushered, Jonny was a regular supernumerary, appearing on stage in back-of-the-stage minor supporting acting roles. I vividly remember one of his finest performances, foreshadowing his future career in theater: he was a waiter at a sidewalk cafe, Cafe Momus, in the second act of Puccini's La Boheme, and his stage business nearly stole the show from the soprano Musetta, whose scene it was.
So, yes, Jonny Marks will be missed, yet he will be happily remenbered as a remarkable person: he was kind; he was creative; he could be quiet and thoughtful or exuberant -- but he was also a hell of a lot of fun to be around.
Jon lived down the street from me on Beechwood Ave. Although our paths did not cross that often, we always maintanied a clsoe friendship. May his memory be a blessing !!!
I knew the wonderful Jonny Marks, as I always called him, almost my whole life. We were friends in elementary school when he was on Beechwood and I was on Rose Hill. I distincly remember having dinner at his house and having brussel sprouts for the first time. I couldnt understand how anyone could eat them - but still treasure the humorous memory.
I also have fond memories of junior year when I worked with Jonny when I was co-director of Continuity for Peanuts and he was Co-Director of the show. I remember being pretty anxious about coming up with a good story and that Jonny swooped in, in his graceful and very confident way and came up with a wonderful idea for the show.
The other special thing that Jonny and I shared is that our parents knew each other in Lexington, KY growing up - his Dad and my Mom. Family legend had it that when my Mom was a girl in Lexington she would go over to the Marks' house when Grauman, Jonny's father, was asleep and just stand and stare at him for a long, long time as he was "the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen." Jon and I loved to reminisce about our parents' legendary connection.
When Lora died suddenly in 2021 Jonny sent me the most beautiful email, I remembr reading it to this day. He knew exactly what the terrible loss of Lora would mean to me and his words made me feel so seen and understood at this time of tremendous shock and grief for me. What a gift that was, and it really made me feel deeply the depth and length of our long friendship
When Jonny moderated our "talkaround" at our last class Reunion, a lot of tough feelings came up for some of us. Jonny handled the situation with such kindness and grace. I said afterwards to Gail and later to Jonny himself that I felt he was "rabbinic" in how he rose to the occasion, allowing all opinions and feelings to be present, and meeting the depth and breadth of the coversation with an expert and graceful touch.
I take some comfort in knowing how incredibly happy Jonny was to be near his family in Florida in recent years. He said it was a dream come true for him after not being near his family for many years. But he was taken from us - and especially from his beloved family - way too soon. My heart goes out to all of his lifelong friends and to his wonderful and devoted family in Florida. May his memory be a blessing. It certainly is for me.
I don't think I ever altogether stopped being aware of Jon's encouraging presence in the world --at least at some level of my consciousness, and at very least like once or twice every few weeks. And now, of course, I am uninterruptedly conscious of his discouraging absence. But I know I'm no good at writing about these kinds of things. So I think what I'm going to do here is just to quote one sentence from a note my wife left for me late in the evening on Saturday, after I'd (finally) fallen asleep.
Edie's contact with Jon during his lifetime was limited. But the occasions of those contacts were distributed through a number of different years, running through a variety of periods. And Edie has very clear memories of a lot of it. The contacts were both (some of them) in-person direct, and (some of them) at the distance that a theater audience sits from the stage. (Or, on one or two occasions, both those things, sequentilally.) And they included, perhaps most vividly in both Edie's and my memories, a dinner which we had with (that is to say, which Edie prepared for) Jon and Tova (then Bunny) at our old house here in Belmont --in other words, a completely private evening a very long time ago.
In her note to me Saturday night, Edie wrote that "[Jon] was a smart, funny, talented, literate man, and he seemed like a very decent soul." Well: smart, funny, talented, and literate are simply unarguable in Jon's case. (A number of his program notes on plays at the American Repertory Theater [ART] in Cambridge were among the best writing in that kind of context that I can ever remember reading.) But in the 54 years that I've known her, I'm not sure that I've ever before heard my wife say something evaluative about anyone's "soul". And yet, nevertheless, in this particular case I think she could safely have dropped even the words "he seemed like." Jon simply was a very decent --a more than "decent"-- soul. He radiated that decency. And I think that that, more than anything, is why something about Jon in particular has managed to remain, throughout these many years, somewhere near my conscious processing of many of the kinds of stuff [NOTE: that word is a euphemism here, obviously] which life keeps throwing at one --or, at least, which life keeps causing one to see or become aware of.
Jon was an extraordinary guy, in a most unusually wide variety of important ways. To me personally, this "way" was the most important of them all.
So sorry to hear about Johnny. Here is one of many fond memories: We were in 5th grade at North Avondale. There were 3 5th grade sections, one with Jerry Malman, seemed like sort of the jocks and bigger guys, one with Arn Bortz and Paul Brower, the most popuilar kids and good athletes at the sports other than tackle football, where Jerry's class would have been stronger. Our class seemed a bit more like the misfits, think "Bad News Bears." Mr Bagnoli was the teacher for Arn and Paul's section and the umpire for the annual highly contested softball tournament, so of course he gave his class the bye in the first round. We played Jerry Malman's section in round 1, and were decided underdogs! Somehow we eked out a win. For the 5th grade crown, next up were the huge favorites, especially with Bagnoli calling balls and strikes from behind the pitcher, and heckling me from there most of the game while I was pitching. The game at lunch time moved along at a surprising clip and we played 4 or 5 quick scoreless innings before eeking out 2 runs in the top of the 5th. In the bottom of the 5th, Dana Cohen came up with a man on first and crushed one of my pitches deep to center field. Johnny was out there. For all of his wonderful qualities, he would admit his eyes weren't so good, and he was not the best centerfielder in Cincinnati. He ran back and staggered around and somehow got his glove on the screaming line drive and held on for dear life. He came into the dugout a true hero! The bell rang and we were improbable 5th grade champs! We went on to beat Mark Kuby's 4th grade champs and held our own before losing to the sixth graders in a close game and losing our chance to play the teachers. It has been a long time since 5th grade, but all of your teammates miss you and remember "THE CATCH."
Separated from West Park Drive by a deep woods, I could typically make it home to Glencross Ave.after school before the dinner bell rang when hanging around with Mayerson, Kuby, Bortz, Brower and Handler. However, it was tougher to time the mile jouney from Rosehill and Beechwood Aves. Despite the cut thru stairs fromJonny Mark's side yard to Mitchell Ave. I was often tardy and deprived of dinner as mother never "saved a plate." I am forever grateful for my youthful relationship with Jonny as well as others in that hood. Miss them yes, but they're preserved in amber of the fifties and sixties.
Sandy Steele (Bauman)
Jon and I were in communication in mid January. He asked if my husband John and I could visit him in Palm Harbor, Florida. We tentatively set a date for February 12th. On January 23rd, he texted that he had an emergency operation and was in the hospital, and that Tova, his wife, was in hospice care. Tina, Tova's daughter who we met at our last reunion, contacted me on February 2nd to say Jon was in ICU but was improving. On February 11th, Tina wrote to me to say he was disappointed that we could not get together as he was stil in the hospital.. I texted her back and she told me on February 13th that she would for send him our love and prayers. So sorry to see the Facebook post and then Gail's email. He will be greatly missed!
David Buchholz
Jon and I became friends after we retired more than we had been in high school. He had lived near Kensington and visited when he was in the area. My neighbor and Jon were linked through the A.C.T. I've learned more about his extraordinary accomplishments in these last few years than I had known before. I loved the image he posted with Meryl Streep when this sIte went up. He was extraordinary. Such a loss.
Philip Spiess
Jon Marks was one of my really good friends in high school (I had two groups of friends, one in Clifton, one in Avondale). He, Jeff Rosen, and I often got together on Saturdays at my house or Jeff's on Rose Hill Avenue (for some reason, I don't think I was ever at Jonny's) to create crazy scenarios on the tape recorder with sound effects and music, or otherwise play games, play opera recordings, or just get into creative mischief. It was one such Saturday when my father took the three of us to the City Dump and Incinerator for a memorable visit (described at Post #6020, 5-11-2022, herein).
But it is only now, as I reflect on the past, that I realize, during the many times that he and I worked together on theatrical events at Walnut Hills High, Jon wrote most of the lines that I later enacted on stage. The first of these was our 8th-grade Latin project for Miss Ewald's class, performed by many of our classmates, a parody of Homer's Odyssey ("Ulysses") that we called "Useless." Written largely by Jon Marks and Jeff Rosen, with a little help from me ("little" is the operative word here), it was performed one morning in the Small Auditorium for an audience of Latin students (Latin teacher Laura Rife walked out on it), and later on in a second performance in a classroom in the new Annex. Jonny and Jeff assigned me the lead role of Useless, on his way home from Toy to Mythica, after the Greek wars. (It was the first of my many occasions to appear in a toga.) Later, for "Peanuts, '62," Jon and I (and perhaps someone else) met at Teedee Spelman's apartment to write the plot and lines for the "continuity." Again, I had a lead role, as millionaire "K. Farley Dingwipe," delivering Jon's lines; these concluded with me being carried off stage in the arms of Frannie Grace (!). (There are a couple of views of these things, including one of Jon, Teedee, and me backstage after the show, on my Profile -- photos 5, 6, 7, 10, and 11.) And yet again, in the "Walnuts of 1964," Jon was a major writer and coordinator of the four separate plots that the show contained, along with (again) me, Dale Gieringer, and a couple others (our humor ran pretty much to puns in those days)); Jon also largely directed the show, while Chuck Cole was the overall coordinator. Jonny wrote for me the memorable campaign speech of Senator Stephen Yunk of Ohio (Act IV), said lines being a parody of a famous Crest Toothpaste commercial of the period: "[My opponent] Fest has been shown to be a defective delay-intentive dentist who can be of diminuitive valor when confused in a sententiously applied program of moral highness and regulatory Presidential care."
But there were other events as well: Jonny and I performed together in the Junior Class play, Arsenic and Old Lace, he as Jonathan Brewster (the Boris Karloff role) and I as Teddy Roosevelt Brewster; and he was my editor at The Chatterbox our Senior year when he asked me to direct the humor column (there were several of us writers for it), "Notes from the Padded Cell." (His father, Grauman Marks, took lots of pictures of "Useless" and Arsenic and Old Lace and distributed them to the participants.) And then there was the Summer Opera at the Zoo: although I just ushered, Jonny was a regular supernumerary, appearing on stage in back-of-the-stage minor supporting acting roles. I vividly remember one of his finest performances, foreshadowing his future career in theater: he was a waiter at a sidewalk cafe, Cafe Momus, in the second act of Puccini's La Boheme, and his stage business nearly stole the show from the soprano Musetta, whose scene it was.
So, yes, Jonny Marks will be missed, yet he will be happily remenbered as a remarkable person: he was kind; he was creative; he could be quiet and thoughtful or exuberant -- but he was also a hell of a lot of fun to be around.
Jerome (Jerry) Malman
Jon lived down the street from me on Beechwood Ave. Although our paths did not cross that often, we always maintanied a clsoe friendship. May his memory be a blessing !!!
Mary Benjamin
I knew the wonderful Jonny Marks, as I always called him, almost my whole life. We were friends in elementary school when he was on Beechwood and I was on Rose Hill. I distincly remember having dinner at his house and having brussel sprouts for the first time. I couldnt understand how anyone could eat them - but still treasure the humorous memory.
I also have fond memories of junior year when I worked with Jonny when I was co-director of Continuity for Peanuts and he was Co-Director of the show. I remember being pretty anxious about coming up with a good story and that Jonny swooped in, in his graceful and very confident way and came up with a wonderful idea for the show.
The other special thing that Jonny and I shared is that our parents knew each other in Lexington, KY growing up - his Dad and my Mom. Family legend had it that when my Mom was a girl in Lexington she would go over to the Marks' house when Grauman, Jonny's father, was asleep and just stand and stare at him for a long, long time as he was "the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen." Jon and I loved to reminisce about our parents' legendary connection.
When Lora died suddenly in 2021 Jonny sent me the most beautiful email, I remembr reading it to this day. He knew exactly what the terrible loss of Lora would mean to me and his words made me feel so seen and understood at this time of tremendous shock and grief for me. What a gift that was, and it really made me feel deeply the depth and length of our long friendship
When Jonny moderated our "talkaround" at our last class Reunion, a lot of tough feelings came up for some of us. Jonny handled the situation with such kindness and grace. I said afterwards to Gail and later to Jonny himself that I felt he was "rabbinic" in how he rose to the occasion, allowing all opinions and feelings to be present, and meeting the depth and breadth of the coversation with an expert and graceful touch.
I take some comfort in knowing how incredibly happy Jonny was to be near his family in Florida in recent years. He said it was a dream come true for him after not being near his family for many years. But he was taken from us - and especially from his beloved family - way too soon. My heart goes out to all of his lifelong friends and to his wonderful and devoted family in Florida. May his memory be a blessing. It certainly is for me.
David Engel
I don't think I ever altogether stopped being aware of Jon's encouraging presence in the world --at least at some level of my consciousness, and at very least like once or twice every few weeks. And now, of course, I am uninterruptedly conscious of his discouraging absence. But I know I'm no good at writing about these kinds of things. So I think what I'm going to do here is just to quote one sentence from a note my wife left for me late in the evening on Saturday, after I'd (finally) fallen asleep.
Edie's contact with Jon during his lifetime was limited. But the occasions of those contacts were distributed through a number of different years, running through a variety of periods. And Edie has very clear memories of a lot of it. The contacts were both (some of them) in-person direct, and (some of them) at the distance that a theater audience sits from the stage. (Or, on one or two occasions, both those things, sequentilally.) And they included, perhaps most vividly in both Edie's and my memories, a dinner which we had with (that is to say, which Edie prepared for) Jon and Tova (then Bunny) at our old house here in Belmont --in other words, a completely private evening a very long time ago.
In her note to me Saturday night, Edie wrote that "[Jon] was a smart, funny, talented, literate man, and he seemed like a very decent soul." Well: smart, funny, talented, and literate are simply unarguable in Jon's case. (A number of his program notes on plays at the American Repertory Theater [ART] in Cambridge were among the best writing in that kind of context that I can ever remember reading.) But in the 54 years that I've known her, I'm not sure that I've ever before heard my wife say something evaluative about anyone's "soul". And yet, nevertheless, in this particular case I think she could safely have dropped even the words "he seemed like." Jon simply was a very decent --a more than "decent"-- soul. He radiated that decency. And I think that that, more than anything, is why something about Jon in particular has managed to remain, throughout these many years, somewhere near my conscious processing of many of the kinds of stuff [NOTE: that word is a euphemism here, obviously] which life keeps throwing at one --or, at least, which life keeps causing one to see or become aware of.
Jon was an extraordinary guy, in a most unusually wide variety of important ways. To me personally, this "way" was the most important of them all.
David
Steve Kanter
So sorry to hear about Johnny. Here is one of many fond memories: We were in 5th grade at North Avondale. There were 3 5th grade sections, one with Jerry Malman, seemed like sort of the jocks and bigger guys, one with Arn Bortz and Paul Brower, the most popuilar kids and good athletes at the sports other than tackle football, where Jerry's class would have been stronger. Our class seemed a bit more like the misfits, think "Bad News Bears." Mr Bagnoli was the teacher for Arn and Paul's section and the umpire for the annual highly contested softball tournament, so of course he gave his class the bye in the first round. We played Jerry Malman's section in round 1, and were decided underdogs! Somehow we eked out a win. For the 5th grade crown, next up were the huge favorites, especially with Bagnoli calling balls and strikes from behind the pitcher, and heckling me from there most of the game while I was pitching. The game at lunch time moved along at a surprising clip and we played 4 or 5 quick scoreless innings before eeking out 2 runs in the top of the 5th. In the bottom of the 5th, Dana Cohen came up with a man on first and crushed one of my pitches deep to center field. Johnny was out there. For all of his wonderful qualities, he would admit his eyes weren't so good, and he was not the best centerfielder in Cincinnati. He ran back and staggered around and somehow got his glove on the screaming line drive and held on for dear life. He came into the dugout a true hero! The bell rang and we were improbable 5th grade champs! We went on to beat Mark Kuby's 4th grade champs and held our own before losing to the sixth graders in a close game and losing our chance to play the teachers. It has been a long time since 5th grade, but all of your teammates miss you and remember "THE CATCH."
Steve
Jon Singer
Separated from West Park Drive by a deep woods, I could typically make it home to Glencross Ave.after school before the dinner bell rang when hanging around with Mayerson, Kuby, Bortz, Brower and Handler. However, it was tougher to time the mile jouney from Rosehill and Beechwood Aves. Despite the cut thru stairs fromJonny Mark's side yard to Mitchell Ave. I was often tardy and deprived of dinner as mother never "saved a plate." I am forever grateful for my youthful relationship with Jonny as well as others in that hood. Miss them yes, but they're preserved in amber of the fifties and sixties.
Steven Levinson
It has come to me that there is now a hole in the world where Jon used to be.
Charles Judd
So fond memories of Jon at WH andd Yale. He was a treasure!