From an obituary in the Traverse City Record-Eagle in Michigan:
As her husband left for a meeting in 1974, where he and other bishops of the Episcopal Church were to consider the ordination of women, Marjorie Bennison warned him of consequences back home if he were not to change his mind and vote yes. He voted yes.
Raised the granddaughter of Swedish and Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota at a time when Anglo-Americans dominated the state’s political and economic interests, Marjorie spent her life in the majority community quietly but persistently advocating for minorities. She was still negotiating the feelings complicated by her background when at 101 years of age she died peacefully on Jan. 21, 2019, at Cordia, a senior residential club in Traverse City.
Marjorie Elizabeth Haglun was born on July 27, 1917, in Superior, Wisconsin. She spent her early years in Duluth, Minnesota, before her family moved to Minneapolis, where her father, John Arthur Haglun, prospered as a trader on the grain exchange until the [D]epression erased the family’s fortunes and necessitated her transfer from a private school to Washburn High School. Her mother, Sophie (Johnson), was a homemaker.
While living at home she attended the University of Minnesota, graduating with a degree in art history in 1939.
She set aside her aspiration to become an architect in order to marry Charles Bennison, whom she had first met at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Minneapolis, when both were five years of age.
One of the Bennisons’ sons, Charles Jr., served as Bishop of Pennsylvania from 1998 to 2012.
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
