Remembering Marilyn Mathieson Vernon (1933 - 2021)
by Brianne Sanchez
In her passionate quest to make the Des Moines Metro Opera memorable, Marilyn Mathieson Vernon established herself as a legendary volunteer and supporter. That doesn’t mean she stayed behind the scenes.
Marilyn’s tenacity and enthusiasm for the company gave her a prima donna’s presence at spectacular parties thrown to build the DMMO audience—and enhance its budget. During the company’s first decades, she envisioned elaborate evenings in service of expanding DMMO’s production capabilities and creative vision.
“We’d have riotous committee meetings to come up with gala plans and tent dinners,” said longtime catering collaborator Michael LaValle. “Marilyn was very willing to tell you exactly what she thought, and they were always energetic ideas. I was just young and crazy enough that I would say yes to everything the ‘Opera Ladies’ asked me to do.”
No detail was too small for Marilyn, who insisted on fresh flowers in every restroom during the season—a tradition continued even today. The Opera Ladies’ inventiveness and panache helped cement DMMO’s reputation as a performing arts organization capable of presenting high-caliber talent and thinking big.
As Marilyn herself remarked in the board president’s report in a 1984 newsletter, “We have come a long way from that small and dedicated group of opera enthusiasts who produced the 1973 season on a budget of $22,000.”
She went on to preview the 12th season, describing plans for Verdi’s “grand” opera, Aïda, which was staged (in a break from tradition) two nights at the Des Moines Civic Center: “This very ambitious undertaking will feature over 150 on-stage performers, four separate ballets, an orchestra of 70 musicians, and the grand triumphal march with live exotic animals. The planning and logistics required for this production are breath- taking; however, the end result should be an opera experience long remembered by Iowa opera fans.”
For LaValle, the Egypt-themed riverfront party Marilyn and her friends hosted to celebrate Aïda’s opening was even more unforgettable. “[The Opera Ladies] had us all dressed up in Italian Venetian gondolier outfits,” he said, “and when you came down to the Riverboat from the Botanical Gardens, Marilyn arranged to have camels on the riverbank. Everybody was drinking champagne and having a good time, with music playing, and four burly, half-naked guys in Egyptian pharaoh outfits came onto the boat carrying a litter with a sarcophagus on it. They put it down on the deck, and there’s a mummy inside. They pulled the mummy out, grabbed the gauze it was wrapped in, and started to twist it around and around. Marilyn Vernon was inside, doing her best Cleopatra.”
Soliciting support didn’t just happen at grand galas. Marilyn’s longtime friend and fellow opera patron, Chérie Shreck, recalls an afternoon stroll in downtown Des Moines. The two were walking together when a man who had been headed toward them completely changed course after spotting the women in his path. “Marilyn said that happened to her all the time because people were afraid that she’d ask them for money,” Shreck recalled with a laugh. “She took me under her wing and helped me become really involved with DMMO, and she made me proud.”
Marilyn’s husband Bill was by her side at opera functions, and she involved her children and church community. “I also tagged along with everything,” said daughter Stephanie Critchfield. “My mom also taught Sunday school in Newton, and they had a summer camp. Rather than just doing traditional camp activities, she had the kids decorate boxes that were ultimately used for opera box dinners.”
Stephanie went on to intern with the opera, and Dr. Michael Patterson, DMMO’s longest-serving staff member, recalls her hands-on help. On one perfect summer afternoon, Stephanie drove him and Doug Duncan [the late operating manager] in a white Volkswagen convertible to make a summer fundraising call in Des Moines. “Marilyn was thrilled to have her daughter working for the company that summer, and Doug was just thrilled with Stephanie’s efforts,” Patterson said.
Opera connections remain part of Marilyn’s legacy. Her son, Chris Vernon, currently serves on the DMMO board; and grandson Max Vernon is an opera singer, studying at the University of Michigan.
Marilyn left a mark on the world as indelible as the ‘thank you’ and ‘thinking of you’ notes she’d scrawl to friends in her “flamboyant and colorful” handwriting, always with a purple pen.
“My parents were involved in a lot of groups in the Des Moines area, but the opera was absolutely number one for my mother,” Chris said. “She might not have been a singer, but she loved the stage. The opera was her creative outlet and a way to give back. She knew she was working to build something bigger that would benefit Iowa.”