Obituary of Marie R. Motes

Marie R. Motes’ full life ended on May 29, 2020, five weeks short of her 91^st birthday, in Arlington, VA.  She was born in Westerly, RI on July 3, 1929, the child of William J. Motes and Lillian Dionne Motes, was raised in and around town, and graduated from Westerly High in 1947.  She married the following year, and at more than one class reunion she carried off the prize for most children—seven during her 20-year marriage to the late Francis E. (Ed) Taillon. 

Marie is survived by brother William Motes of Newport, NC; children Linda Hartman of Hyattsville, MD; Paul Taillon of Streamwood, IL; Michael Taillon of Meadows of Dan, VA; Tracy Taillon of Fairfax, VA; and Peter Taillon of Acworth, GA; nieces, nephews, godchildren; and grandchildren Kurt and Karl, Neal and Tia, and Andrew.

In partnership with Ed Taillon, Marie built and operated SoundCraft, offering top-of-the-line audio components, with a sound room for assembling them into a precision-tuned system, on Canal Street in Westerly.

In her late 30s Marie began anew, earning accreditation in the male-dominated field of programming mainframe computers before joining the computer-development team at Washington Trust Bank in Westerly, and later Pfizer, Inc. in Groton, CT.  For more than a decade, she was also an H&R Block tax preparer, and later she did free tax prep for elders and non-English-speakers where she lived.

In pursuit of a lifelong passion, Marie earned a B.A. in Sociology, magna cum laude, from Eastern Connecticut State University in 1989, and a Master of Social Work, cum laude, from the University of Connecticut School of Social Work in 1991.  Before she retired, she worked as a therapist at the Norwich State Hospital.  

Marie indulged her love of travel whenever she could, on road trips with her younger children and friends in a never-ending quest to visit every lighthouse in the lower 48 states, Hawaii, and the southern fringes of Canada.  She so loved lighthouses that she learned PowerPoint in her 80s to do a slide presentation of their histories and photos for neighbors.  After retirement, she enjoyed longer trips to Europe, Peru, and Mexico. 

She was an avid reader of popular science, psychology, history, and murder mysteries, and became a whiz at jigsaw puzzles in her later years.  Marie was a life-long philanthropist, sometimes giving beyond her means, and her favorite charity has been St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN.  Her cremated remains will be buried later this year at Saint Sebastian Cemetery in Westerly, RI.