Marcie Leitzke: A life of words

SHAWANO — A lifelong writer, a poet, who loved words.

That’s how John Mutter, vice president of the Shawano Area Writers, described Marcie Leitzke, one of the founding members of the writers group. Leitzke died Monday at the age of 92.

Marcie was a lifetime member of Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP), secretary of WFOP and National Federation of State Poetry Societies, (NFSPS). She published four books of poetry, one book, “According to Matthew” (life according to her Down Syndrome son), and one cookbook, “Early 1900s Pantry Recipes.”

She will have a poem included in the 2020 calendar published by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.

Marcie was a charter member of Shawano Area Writers beginning in 1966, and when she lived in Lake Placid, Florida, for several years, she chartered The Ridge Area Writers in nearby Sebring, Florida. Both organizations are still active today.

“She was a great promoter of writers,” Mutter said. “She was the most aggressive writer in our group.” He said she wrote columns, essays, poetry, newsletters, and worked hard to get them into print.

Helping new writers get their materials printed was one of the goals of the early SAW group, Mutter said. Leitzke was a champion of writing for all kinds of outlets. Newsletters, letters to the editor, columns — such as a column she wrote for an antique tractor magazine — all “counted” when it came to being published, he said.

Because she and her husband owned a farm and then an antique business, she also had keen business sense, Mutter said. When he asked her advice on rights to a story he was selling, she counseled him to sell only first-time rights. That was a good decision, he said, based on experiences he heard from other writers.

Leitzke’s love of writing was lifelong, he said.

“She never lost her desire to learn, to meet other people and talk about writing,” Mutter said.

Within Leitzke’s long portfolio are columns that she wrote for the Shawano Leader. One of them, originally published on Oct. 26, 2016, talked about how difficult it was to get published. After 65 rejections, it was finally published, and reprised in the Leader.

In the column, she wrote: “Life isn’t a bowl of cherries — it’s a tube of toothpaste!”

She writes about how different individuals approach life with different styles, squeezing life’s contents from the middle or from the end, with patience or, as she described her life, “squeezing the tube lavishly and generously.”

“Now is the time to contemplate on God’s grace through the years,” she wrote. “It’s a time of reminiscing to see what we’ve accomplished. It’s expedient that we squeeze everything we can out of what’s left. I, for one, can never throw away an empty tube. It seems I can always get a little more out of it. It is a time for savoring life to the fullest, much like our childhood, when there was time to play and dream and invent things to fill our days.

“The toothpaste tube can last a long time and usually does in later years. The longer an old oak tree stands, the tougher it gets. Do you put the cap back on the tube even when it’s empty? Think of the cap as the crown to your life. Put it on and wear it proudly. You’ve lived a full life. Awards and rewards have all been yours no matter how you squeezed the tube.”

cryczek@newmedia-wi.com