By Rebecca Goodman
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Mrs. Marks

HYDE PARK - Recalling her Colorado roots, Wilma Glauber Marks sported a cowboy hat and boots to dance the night away in celebration of her 100th birthday last year.

"She was one of the most positive, appreciative, warm and loving people we have ever met," said her friend Corky Steiner of Mount Adams. "It was this positive and youthful attitude which kept her spirit young as she aged. She found beauty, curiosity and a willingness to explore in just about everything."

Mrs. Marks, known as "Billy Bird" to her friends, died Monday at her Hyde Park home. She was 101.

Born in the summer of 1902 in Cripple Creek, Colo. - a gold-mining boomtown in the Rocky Mountains - she also lived in Chicago, New York, Memphis, Prague, Carlsbad, Dresden and Berlin before setting down roots in Cincinnati in the 1920s.

She enjoyed working with the blind, and she also volunteered for the Girl Scouts and at the Condon School.

Mrs. Marks loved the Cincinnati Symphony and the Art Museum and supported St. Joseph Home.

She was a member of the Isaac M. Wise Temple and the Ridge Club.

Julian Marks, her husband of 43 years, died in 1970.

Survivors include a nephew, Robert Glauber of Boston.

Visitation is 11:30 a.m. today, followed by the funeral at noon at Weil Funeral Home, 8350 Cornell Road, Symmes Township. Interment follows at United Jewish Cemetery in Walnut Hills. Friends may call on her family 2-4 p.m. at her home, 2444 Madison Road.

Memorials are suggested to a charity of the donor's choice.

E-mail rgoodman@enquirer.com