For Felix "Curley" S. Marso, life was one long battle, from the Pacific theater of World War II to his family's very personal struggle to provide their mentally retarded daughter with a better life.
But no amount of tribulation could stop this East County resident from letting his hair down once in a while (and for the record, yes, it was curly). Gin rummy and dice were Marso's games, and even after putting in 12-hour days behind the counter of the grocery store he owned for nearly 20 years, he kept the deck shuffled and a smile on his face.
Marso, known to countless families as the owner of Valley Farms Market in Spring Valley, died Nov. 28.
A well-respected grocer who became president of the San Diego Grocer's Association in 1975 and served on its board of directors for 25 years, Marso got his start behind the counter in 1946 as a salesman at Cuyamaca Meats. He later served as part owner of Allied Gardens Market, and in 1956, purchased Valley Farms Market, where he worked until he retired in 1977, rarely taking a day off and sometimes working another job as a Kirby vacuum salesman just to make ends meet.
Jim Marso, one of Marso's surviving two sons, said his father would still drive over to his store well into his 80s, and was always available to lend an ear or a word of advice.
"He taught a good work ethic to people. He was well loved in the community. Once he told me 'This is awful; I'm outliving everybody.' But that mortuary was full (the day of his funeral). People were very loyal to him that knew him. His whole life he was helping other people."
Born Oct. 14, 1916, as the youngest of 11 children, Marso grew up on a farm outside Prairie du Chien, Wis., where he learned early on what it meant to put in a hard day of work. Among other duties, his parents charged him with slaughtering and dressing 10 pigs every fall, a chore that perhaps planted the seed for his later career as a butcher and grocer.
When the Depression hit, young Marso left the farm for Prairie du Chien, where he worked odd jobs to help his family, regardless if he was really cut out for the work.
"He worked building dams down in Kentucky where he had to move rocks and boulders," Jim Marso recalled. "He was just a little guy, really skinny."
By his late 30s, Marso wound up in Chicago, where a friend of the family got him a job cutting meat through a butcher's union. Through a mutual acquaintance, he met Eleanor Coulon, who would eventually become his wife and the mother of his five children, including two sets of twins. While the couple was still dating, Marso forged a relationship with Eleanor's two uncles – Jimmy Coulon, who worked for the city of Chicago regulating bars, and Johnny Coulon, a flyweight boxing champ and owner of Coulon's Gym.
"Dad would be over visiting my mom and some bar would have a problem, so he'd go out with uncle Jimmy to break up the fights. Johnny Coulon. . . would take the biggest guy and knock him on his butt, and the rest of the guys would go away. My dad really relished those stories about being over there breaking up the fights."
In 1940, Marso enlisted in the Army and was shipped off to India during World War II, later serving in Burma and China and ultimately achieving the rank of staff sergeant. Although Marso's main duty was overseeing the mess hall, he fired his gun enough to earn an American Defense Service Ribbon and three Bronze Battle Stars. A bout with malaria nearly killed him, but nothing stopped Marso from sending money home to his sick father or keeping in touch with his soon-to-be wife, Eleanor.
A month after the war ended, the Marsos married and settled in Chicago, and in 1946 Eleanor gave birth to their first child, Ellen Sue. But something wasn't right. Being exceptionally premature had damaged the child's speech and motor skills. At the time there were few resources for the mentally retarded, and after the Coulons uprooted themselves and moved out to Grossmont to share a lot that Eleanor's mother had bought, they found that help for their daughter was even harder to find.
"All through the years, my mother was a staunch advocate of retarded children," Jim Marso recalled. "With dad's backing, my mom got a lot off Lexington Avenue in El Cajon and started a dollar-a-month (fund-raising) club. The Marines and the Navy would come out and work to help build the center, and dad would come out and cook a barbecue for the people working on it. They built the place from scratch."
By 1960, the Marsos had established the Angels Unaware Center (now known as the Regional Training Center for the Association of Retarded Children), a resource for people with mental disabilities. Ellen Sue lived with her parents until they were in their 80s, at which point she moved into Friendship Homes in National City. Even after Eleanor died at the age of 84, her husband would visit his daughter at the Friendship Homes and bring tangerines and ice cream from his store.
Much as Marso demonstrated loyalty to his beloved daughter, his customers have remained faithful to his market, even as newer, bigger, more expansive stores have turned up in East County. El Cajon resident Kathleen Kornegay says she's been visiting the store for 40 years, ever since she was 8 years old.
"Curley was funny, really generous," Kornegay said. "Once I went over (to his store) to pick up meat for mom. Curley had a container full of (rubber) balls and my son wanted one, but they were a dollar each and I didn't have any extra money. My kid was playing with the ball and walked out of store with it, so I made him go back in and apologize for stealing the ball. Curley told him, 'You don't steal from anybody, not even stores.' My son said, 'But I really want the ball and my mama doesn't have a dollar.' So Curley said, 'I'll give you a dollar and you can buy the ball.'
"My son never ever stole anything from anybody after that."
Tiffany Lee-Youngren writes about the arts for the Union-Tribune.
