Obituary of Marion Elizabeth Grove

Marion Grove was born Marion Elizabeth Tice in Trenton, NJ in 1935. The height of the depression, Marion was born to a 16-year-old who put her into foster care. Growing up in foster care was not easy especially during the depression. She told a story with a chuckle of being maybe 6 or 7 and they were paid to pick raspberries at a local farm. She finished one day and came back the next when the farmer had to tell her he couldn’t keep her on as she ate more raspberries than she picked. She quit school at 16 and took odd jobs to support herself. At 21 she became a bartender, later she worked in a factory until one winter in the 1970’s she slipped on the ice and decided that she was moving to Florida. So, she sold her belongings and bought a Greyhound ticket to Melbourne, Florida where a past landlord of hers lived. They helped her find a job and an apartment to start her life anew in Melbourne. In Melbourne she worked as a babysitter, a nursing home attendant turned cook, and did custodial work. In 1983 she attended night school at Palm Bay High to get her GED. A moment she was very proud of. Her last job was doing custodial work in the Olin Life Science Building of Florida Institute of Technology where she became part of her Florida Tech family. She had to leave due to health issues in 2011 but she made some lifelong friends and we will all miss her.