About Marylee
Marylee Boales (born Mary Lee Root in 1944) passed away at home on June 24, 2020, with the same grace and courage that she exhibited throughout her life. A native of Northern California, Marylee and her husband, Gene, moved to Southern California in late 2018 to live near their daughters. She was surrounded by them all in her final days and she left this world knowing that she was well loved.
Marylee was many things in her life, from daughter and big sister to wife, mother and grandmother, friend and mentor. Gene and Marylee met at Chico State when they were both students and they were married in 1967. They just celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary in January of this year.
She is survived by her husband, Gene (Finis Eugene Boales, Jr.); daughters Stacy Varner and Katelyn Gilliard, their husbands Jeff and Nick, and three beloved granddaughters, Jenny, Cora and Graycen; also her siblings Marvin Root, Gerry Root, and Vicki Stevens, all of California; her mother-in-law, Emma Boales of Anderson; and many beloved nieces, nephews, sisters- and brothers-in-law, and cousins. Marylee was the mostly obedient but always loving daughter of Loris Leo Root and Mary Helen Wheeler Root, both deceased. The Root family resided in Gridley (where Marylee was born while her father was serving in WWII), and then in Redwood City and Chico, California.
Marylee started her career as an English teacher at Colusa High School and then taught junior high at Chico Christian School for many years. After moving to San Jose in 1981, Marylee spent the rest of the eighties working in a stock brokerage firm but upon moving back north in 1989, she worked in the non-profit world for several years in both Redding and Red Bluff. She then found her calling as the grant writer for the Shasta Union High School District where she secured grants for programs such as teen pregnancy prevention and the Chinese-language immersion school. After retiring from the school district, Marylee continued to work for various non-profits, published professional articles and taught grant-writing classes at Shasta College. She officially re-retired just a couple of years ago and continued to receive requests for her services until quite recently.
Active in the church throughout her life, Marylee also enjoyed working with women’s ministries at Redding Christian Fellowship. When she was a teacher at Chico Christian School, she was the cheerleading advisor and taught many young teens the fine art of TP’ing. Marylee was also a calligrapher, a poet, and like many others in the 1970s, dabbled briefly in macrame.
In life, Marylee was a generous volunteer, a warm and welcoming spirit, and perhaps above all an incredible mother and grandmother. She taught us all to be kind and compassionate; to look for the light at the end of the tunnel (because it’s always there); when to bite your tongue and where to draw the line; to stop and look up at the clouds; to take a day off now and then for no reason other than you feel like it; and to hold your head up and face life’s toughest challenges with grace and courage (maybe put on some mascara and a “feel good” outfit first, it helps).
Marylee knew how to appreciate the simple things that make life enjoyable. Things like nature (especially butterflies, trees, clouds and the rugged Pacific coastline), good books, good people, humor in dark moments, word games, finding grammatical errors in professionally printed signs and publications, and her morning coffee. She found the joy and beauty in each day, because it’s there if you just take a minute to look for it.