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Publishing pioneer, arts council founder Marjorie M. SchuckBy CRAIG BASSE
© St. Petersburg Times, ST. PETERSBURG -- Marjorie M. Schuck, a retired magazine and book publisher who helped found the Suncoast Writers Conference, has died at 80. Mrs. Schuck, among the founders of the Pinellas Arts Council, died Tuesday (Oct. 30, 2001) at home. "She was not shy in speaking up for the arts," said Sallie Parks, a former Pinellas County commissioner who was the first executive director of the Arts Council when it was established in 1976 with Mrs. Schuck on the board of directors. "She believed that the arts would turn around downtown St. Petersburg," Parks said Wednesday. "This was more than 25 years ago and that was a hard sell. People didn't believe it." Mrs. Schuck came to St. Petersburg in 1958, recently widowed and feeling that New York City had lost its charm. She found St. Petersburg just right for her purposes: "The only place a single woman with a limited income could establish a publishing business," she said in 1989 on the 17th anniversary of the Suncoast Writers Conference at the University of South Florida's St. Petersburg campus. "I think I was a pioneer woman in publishing," she said. "At least that's what I'm referred to across the country." Poetry was her first love. She met poet Jane McClelland in 1967, and the two founded the Poetry Association of St. Petersburg. The organization dissolved, but from the needs seen through it, the two women published Poetry Venture magazine the following year. The business went well, Mrs. Schuck recalled. Within a few years, "We knew we had a tiger by the tail. And I knew I really wanted to publish books." In 1972 she rented a former laundry building on First Avenue S, and Valkyrie Press was born. By 1980, when she sold Valkyrie, she had published everything from leaflets to novels, including 265 books, and had assembled a staff of 35. During the same year she was putting together Valkyrie Press, she became a founder of the Florida Suncoast Writers' Conference, with the help of Doris Enholm and Ed Hirshberg, a USF English professor. Mrs. Schuck, one of the first two female members on the executive board of the Committee of 100 in Pinellas County, was honored in 1997 with one of 10 Silver Super Senior Awards from the city of St. Petersburg Commission on Aging for outstanding community service and leadership. Marjorie Massey Schuck was born in Winchester, Va., and studied at the University of Minnesota and New York University. Her memberships included the Academy of American Poets and the National Society of Literature and the Arts. She was a former chairman of the local chapter of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In 1976, she was selected as one of 76 "Florida Patriots" by the state's Bicentennial Commission for her contributions to art, business and literature. Her husband of four years, Dr. Franz Schuck, died in 1958. Survivors include a brother, Walter P. Massey, Charlotte, N.C., and several nieces and nephews. ALifeTribute FuneralCare, St. Petersburg, is in charge of arrangements. Memorial contributions are suggested to Hospice Foundation of the Florida Suncoast, 300 East Bay Drive, Largo, FL 33770, or the SPCA of St. Petersburg, 9099 130th Ave. N, Largo, FL 34643-1441. - Information from Times files was used in this obituary.
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