Contra Costa Times

July 7, 1987

Obituary

Teacher Marjorie Ann Silva dies

Pioneering UC-Berkeley editor

on Mt. Diablo faculty 32 years

CONCORD - Marjorie Ann Silva, a satirist, cartoonist and art teacher who inspired generations of students at Mt. Diablo High School, died Thursday at her home following a long fight against cancer.

Silva, 66, retired from Mt. Diablo in 1980 after 32 years of teaching art.

"Marge was the consummate teacher,' recalled Joan Stepp Smith, a former student and longtime friend. "She was very intellectual. But the roughest kid in her class could get her teaching.

"For me, she exposed me to the entire world of literature and art and Romance languages. You couldn't be with her without learning."

Silva took troubled students into her home, and helped send students to college or to Europe to expand their education. If the school ran short of art supplies, she paid for them herself.

Several Bay Area artists got their start in her classes, including Don Reich, muralist Anne Caudle, landscape artist Rod Newhall and Bob Semans, who teaches at San Jose State.

A native of Berkeley, Silva was the first woman editor of the UC-Berkeley humor magazine, the Pelican. Her cartoons, drawn during World War II, satirized the war, amnesty and politics. Placed on probation for her cartoons lampooning campus politics, she continued drawing for the Pelican under an assumed name, "Phoebe V. Beebe."

Her brother, Franklyn Silva, remembers her as an irreverent, lively young woman who plastered the family's faces to make life masks and painted a mural on their father's garage.

She survived by her brother, of Sausalito, and a sister, Eleanor Nolan, of Auburn.

A memorial service will be held for Silva, but no date has been set. For information, call Smith at 831-9129.