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Faculty Emeriti Profile: Marian Turk

Marian Turk will never forget the first time she visited Ransom Everglades. It was the late 1970s and she was teaching at Miami Country Day. She had signed up for a special teacher school-swap, a day when area teachers spent time at another school, and her school to visit was RE. Luckily for her, she spent her entire day with none other than Dan Leslie Bowden. They stayed in touch for several years and when a spot opened up in the English department in the fall of 1981, she got a call. "Dan was Chairman of the English department and I had a great interview with him because I didn't have to say a word. He was so entertaining!"
Marian Teresa Kuffler was born and spent her earliest years in Glens Falls, in upstate New York. Her parents moved to a suburb, Manhasset, Long Island around the time she started first grade. Said Ms. Turk, “My father was a businessman who went into Manhattan every day and my mother stayed home. It was a great place to grow up.”

She attended Northwestern University in Chicago and graduated with a B.A. in English. “I originally took journalism courses, but when I realized the field was mostly men, I changed my major to English,” Ms. Turk said. 

After graduation came the invariable trip to Europe with friends. “We traveled until the money ran out,” Turk said. “One time in Paris, a foreign Ambassador in a limo stopped for my friends and me and drove us to Versailles. He was so kind and really took care of us. He didn’t deserve the nickname we gave him (the Toad).”

Ms. Turk fell in love with Europe and stayed on in Paris after her friends went home. “I had a return ticket to fly home so I sold it and stayed for another year,” she said. “I had a great time. I had the Toad’s card so I called him and he got me a job at a dentist’s office. I learned French really fast while working there. I had a few roommates while living with an older French woman who had these soirees and dinners with the most fascinating people.”

Ms. Turk returned home after she got sick. Once her health was better, she got a job as an English teacher with kids who were headed to reform school. “It was so difficult, but I ended up loving it.”

That spring, she came to Miami Beach for vacation with some friends and loved it. “I thought it was heaven! The palm trees, the water, and I met my husband then,” she said. He ran a water skiing school on Miami Beach and lived on a houseboat. Once she had finished the school year she headed back for the summer and got a job at the waterskiing school, checking people in. “It was a great summer,” she said.

When the fall came she went back to teaching, but Miami was never far from her mind. “I returned for Thanksgiving and never left!” Marian and Freddie married and had a daughter, Allison ’88 and soon after, she was teaching again.

When Ms. Turk arrived at Ransom Everglades, “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven!” she said. Through the years, she taught 10th grade American Literature, 11th grade British Literature and her favorite, 12th grade elective classes. “I did some college counseling on the side and was the Dean Class Coordinator, where I was responsible for the senior class.”

An avid reader, Ms. Turk loved what she did. “My favorite thing in the world is teaching writing,” she said. “The kids were a receptive audience and were so bright. Helping them learn to like what I loved was the challenge, but opening up that door for them, that is something you have your whole life.”

Ms. Turk retired in 2011 and enjoys running into students from time to time, saying “It is so fun to see them and to hear their memories,” she said. “I’m enjoying not being on a schedule, not being caught up in a job and everything that went with it. Teaching didn’t end at 4 p.m., you know. There was always something to grade, to read, to do, it’s a consuming occupation.”

And what’s retirement been like? “I like not getting up at 6 in the morning and not having a schedule. I’m able to read the paper in bed! Before  Covid, I volunteered quite a bit at the Lotus House, belonged to a book club and did a lot of water and underwater classes,” she said. “I travel five months out of the year to western Massachusetts."

And finally, Ms. Turk said, “Working at Ransom Everglades was a privilege and I feel fortunate to have been here. I never took that for granted.”
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Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. It is rated the top private school in Miami and among the 10 private schools in North America. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.


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