Marjorie M. Hutton (1926-2021)

Jun. 18—Marjorie M. Hutton, a librarian at the Toledo Museum of Art and Maumee Valley Country Day School and a community volunteer who assiduously kept up with world events and technology, died Wednesday in Ohio Living Swan Creek. She was 94.

She had congestive heart failure, her daughter Nora Hutton said.

Mrs. Hutton had just received her master of library degree in 1949 from the University of Michigan when she began her career in a familiar setting: the art museum where her mother, Lillian Mattimoe, taught Saturday art classes for years.

"She had a natural inclination toward the visual and the verbal aspect of books," her daughter said.

During Mrs. Hutton's tenure, she became chairman of the museum division of the Special Libraries Association. And as the Toledo art museum's librarian, she met her husband, William Hutton, an art scholar and museum staff member who later became its chief curator.

The family — which by then included four children — moved in 1965 to Manchester, N.H., when her husband became director of the Currier Gallery of Art. She started a children's film and theater series at the Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences and was among volunteers who organized an elementary school library.

"She had a way of multiplying time," her daughter said. "She was a juggler and acrobat of many things."

Her son, Bill, said: "She was constant energy."

After three years in London, where her husband worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the family settled in South Toledo and her husband returned to the Toledo Museum of Art in 1971.

Mrs. Hutton became upper school librarian at Maumee Valley Country Day School. She initiated an audio-visual room and made sure the library subscribed to periodicals for diverse interests. She guided students to reading material and aided faculty members.

Bill Hutton recalled his mother introducing the school to microfilm and microfiche — and to Betamax videotapes.

"She always was interested in the leading edge, the cutting developments in her profession. She never let go of that interest," her son said. "As personal computers came along, she was right there."

She organized student tours of London and, later, the Soviet Union during the school's annual winter-season learning sabbatical.

She retired from Maumee Valley in the late 1980s and worked for a time as an adviser at Ottawa Hills Travel.

Mrs. Hutton had been a member of Junior League of Toledo and a board member of a local visiting nurse service. She volunteered for Catholic Charities and the Toledo Symphony, and she supported Toledo-Lucas County Public Library.

She was a skilled cook and opened her home to friends and colleagues.

"She was perhaps small in stature, but she certainly was a great, great presence," said Ditte Galbraith, a longtime friend. "She would enter the room, and there was no doubt that Marge had arrived. She was very well read, but also was extremely engaging and very witty."

Born Sept. 19, 1926, to Lillian and Thomas Mattimoe, she was a graduate of Notre Dame Academy and received a bachelor's degree from Marygrove College in Detroit.

She and her husband married Dec. 29, 1956. He died Oct. 4, 2000.

Surviving are her son, William Hutton; daughters, Ruth Hutton, Dr. Mary Burgi, and Eleanor "Nora" Hutton; eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Visitation will begin at 10 a.m. Monday in the Historic Church of St. Patrick downtown, followed by a funeral Mass at 11 a.m. Arrangements are by Coyle Funeral Home.