Marya Elizabeth Hage

Marya Elizabeth Owston was born to Mary, a nurse, and Charles, the town doctor, in Valhalla, North Dakota on August 27, 1932. Her father died when she was three years old and Marya and her mother lived with her grandmother and her aunts, Deedee and Mina, while her mother worked in Minneapolis to support them during the Great Depression. While doing all of this, her mother also pursued a Master’s degree in public health to better support the family. With all these experiences, Marya’s mother taught her that a woman and a mother should always be prepared to take care of her own and the best way to accomplish this was through education. Her mother eventually remarried and Marya became a sister at sixteen with the birth of Esme Evans.

Marya completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and History from the University of Minnesota, Duluth. At UMD she met her husband Orval “Scotty” Hage. They met in a political science class and when she didn’t make it to class she would ask him for notes. He described her as the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and was more than happy to give her his notes. They were always quick to note with a smile that she got a higher grade than him despite her erratic attendance.

Marya and Scotty married in 1954 and settled in Duluth where their first three children were born. There she became involved in local politics, becoming the head of the League of Women Voters in Duluth. Her interest in politics was part of her emphasis on service, though it also gave her another opportunity for collecting. Her collection of political memorabilia includes campaign buttons, posters, nesting dolls of leaders of the Soviet Union, and bobble-head dolls of presidents. One of the thrills of her life was attending the inauguration of President Obama both times.

A promotion for Scotty led to a move to St. Cloud, Minnesota where their fourth child was born. There Marya earned a Master’s degree in psychology, with an emphasis in Rehabilitation Counseling, from Saint Cloud State University. In 1980, Marya founded Meridian Services in her basement, to provide Supervised Living Services for clients with developmental disabilities. Meridian Services was the first licensed Semi-Independent Living Skills program in Minnesota. For her work, she was inducted into the National Association of Women Business Owners Hall of Fame in 2014.

Marya did extensive training in sand play therapy, based in the psychology of Carl Jung. She was a pioneer in using this type of therapy with clients who had developmental delays or were even non-verbal. Her sand table encapsulated another of her passions: travel. The sand table included sand from beaches in every country she had traveled to.

Marya had an adventurous spirit and believed that you should always be open to new experiences. She loved to travel and, even though she didn’t start traveling widely until she was 40 years old, she traveled all over Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Africa, South America and even Antarctica with her children and sister. She met traveling challenges with her typical resilience from flight delays to bad weather or lost luggage. She never wanted to be a bother, though sometimes her minimizing led to problems, like when she developed altitude sickness at Machu Picchu and had to be treated with coca leaf tea and oxygen. She loved the mountains and the Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps was one of her favorite places. She traveled often with her daughter when Kirstin lived in Europe. This was always an adventure that could lead to opera in Vienna or a yurt on the side of the mountain without indoor plumbing.

One of Marya’s favorite sayings was “children need roots and wings”. The other was “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” This idea was shown in the rituals and traditions she established for her family, many of them surrounding the holidays, whether it was celebrating St. Nicholas Day or Epiphany she believed that traditions, whether special foods, music or decorations connected children to their heritage and gave them a firm foundation. She also just loved to celebrate the holidays as anyone who attended her epic yearly Halloween party could attest. Another favorite family ritual was “cookie day” always held the day after Thanksgiving. Marya would mix up many varieties of cookies, including her family’s orange cookies, nutmeg logs, and especially ginger snaps, but the favorite of the grandchildren was the cut-out cookies. Over the years she collected hundreds of cookie cutters, but certain ones were always used at Christmas, though they were not necessarily Christmas themed; favorites included the toothbrush and tooth. One year a cookie nativity set was made and while she was debating whether it was appropriate to eat baby Jesus, her son Christopher popped the whole cookie in his mouth.

A music appreciation class in college instilled a lifelong love of opera. Marya was a season ticket holder at the Minnesota Opera, but also traveled several summers to the Santa Fe Opera. Carmen remained her favorite because of her music appreciation professor, though she also loved Gilbert and Sullivan and passed on this love to her oldest son, Stephen, who is the producer for the Gilbert and Sullivan Very Light Opera Company. An avid reader, Marya at one point belonged to two book clubs. She loved the art of Dr. Seuss and always had at least one or two cats. A lifelong Episcopalian (with a sojourn with the Lutherans), Marya had a deep faith and served the church, helping with Sunday school and writing and putting on plays of Biblical stories when her children were younger and serving on the vestry of her church in later years. Marya was a two-time breast cancer survivor and navigated her illness with her usual resilience and nonchalance.

She dedicated her life to service and family, and she passed these values on to her children. She worked with the Sons of Norway, the Duluth Welfare Council, League of Women Voters, Women’s Guild at her church and delivered Meals on Wheels well into her 80s when she probably should have been receiving them. As a psychologist for the Red Cross, she traveled and worked in multiple disaster sites nationally and internationally. She was especially impacted by her time as a volunteer psychologist working with soldiers at the Pentagon after 9/11.

One of the greatest lessons she taught her children was resilience. No matter what happened, no matter how difficult the experience, her response was often a simple: “Now you know.” To her every experience, even the painful ones had something to teach us. She taught her children to embrace the experience, learn from it and grow. Every challenge gives a person a little more wisdom, a little more strength, and a better understanding of how to move forward. We may not be able to control everything that happens in life, but we can choose what we take from it and how we let it shape the person we become.

She passed away at home surrounded by family on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, at age 93, two days before her 94th birthday. She is survived by her four children, Stephen (Lara) Hage, Rebecca (Peter) Thomley, Kirstin Hage, Christopher (Rushika) Hage; her sister, Esme (Melvin Jones) Evans and her children; eleven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be held Thursday, September 3rd from 4-6pm at 831 West River Parkway, Champlin, MN 55316.

Mass of the Resurrection will be Monday, September 7th at 10am at Anglican Church of St. Dunstan, 4241 Brookside Avenue, St. Louis Park, MN 55416. Reception to follow at 5521 Goya Lane, Edina, MN 55436.