Marguerite Mitchell Obituary

Marguerite "Rusty" Mitchell, nee Channell, 92, passed away on September 6, 2016 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Marguerite was born Marguerite Swanson Channell on Oct. 28, l923 in Livingston, Alabama, the youngest of three daughters, to Vernon L. and Ella Mae Channell. After graduating from Tuscaloosa High School, Marguerite attended the University of Alabama for a year prior to taking a job within the public affairs department of the United States government, working first in Atlanta, Georgia and later in the Panama Canal Zone in the early days of World War II. While there she edited the Panama Zone Magazine, and met and married her first husband, a young pilot, Major Steve Wilson. The couple began married life at Albrooke Air Station in the Panama Zone. As a military wife she accompanied her SAC pilot to many locations stateside during their l3 year marriage.



After their divorce Marguerite re-entered journalism first at the Mobile Press Register, in Mobile Alabama. In l962 she came to Colorado Springs to visit old military friends, Richard and Timmilou Rixon. They wined and dined her and introduced her to Richard's friend, Lynch D. Mitchell. The two formed an immediate bond and she decided to stay in Colorado Springs. She needed a job and she went looking to the Gazette Telegraph. Marguerite became its Wednesday Food Editor. With all her ducks in order she married "Mitch" and began a new life.



Marguerite was a creative writer, a witty raconteur and a skillful storyteller who managed to weave many of the foibles of Southern folklore into her weekly food page. She spent more than 20 years at the Gazette, then left to do the same at the Colorado Springs Sun. Few of her friends knew that one of her headlines for the Gazette earned her $35 from Reader's Digest in 1981. "On an article in the food section of the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph: 'SHRIMP-IT'S THE UPPER CRUSTACEAN.'"

A lifelong booklover, she was a serious reader, who volunteered at the Cheyenne Mountain Library. Even after advancing age and ill health forced her to use a walker, she planned and managed the used book sales for the branch to the end of life. She loved to travel and made several trips to Mexico and South America and celebrated her 75th birthday with a trip to Bilbao, Spain to see the new museum built by her favorite architect, Frank Gehry.

Marguerite Mitchell did not suffer fools lightly. Throughout the years she developed a fierce group of loyal friends and dined with them often in her Cheyenne Canon home and later at her Regency apartment. Her rallying cry was "old age is not for sissies!"



Marguerite is survived by four nieces and a nephew: Mary Lynn Slough, Nancy Wines, Michal Cox, Holly Witchey, Geoffrey Rarick, as well as two great-nieces and one great-nephew. Her husband Lynch D. Mitchell predeceased her in 1986. Marguerite requested no funeral services; a private gathering of friends will celebrate her life in October. Marguerite arranged for her ashes to be carried to Alabama and placed next to her mother's grave in Mobile. Cheers Rusty, we will miss you!