David Jerome
Correspondent

Local resident Marilyn Bunnell recently celebrated her 95th birthday. Idyllwild has been her home since her retirement in the mid-1980s, after a long career as a life-science educator. She was born Sept. 7, 1926, in Los Angeles, to Frank and Dora Bunnell. For many years she shared her home in Fern Valley with her widowed mother, who lived to age 103. Her brother Harold, who passed away in 2020 at 96, took part in the 1944 invasion of France, driving a snorkel-equipped pickup truck up Omaha Beach. His three sons, her nephews, helped to flesh out her story.

Marilyn earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology at Cal State, Huntington Beach (HB), and although invited to teach there, taught more than 30 years at HB high schools including Marina High. She remembers teaching anatomy, physiology and biology, often the advanced sections. Perusing the yearbooks from these years, a science department shows her as, at first, the lone female. She always believed women could do incredible things by themselves, and mentored many students, boys and girls who went on to careers in science, medicine and engineering.

Marilyn was keenly interested in life science in high school, still remembering skinning and mounting animals like a coyote. “It was fun and sometimes gory,” she said. She went on to preserve and mount many museum-quality specimens, and her students would contact her when they encountered them.

A high point of her teaching career was her 1985 visit to Washington DC. Her school, Marina High, was selected as one of 276 model schools in the country, and was invited to send three representatives to meet President Ronald Reagan and then-Secretary of Education William Bennett. Her colleagues selected her to join the school’s principal and board president at the National School Recognition Ceremony.

Her accomplishments as a scientist include the discovery of a new species of chigger in the Santa Ana mountains, Euschoengastia otophila. This was part of a larger chigger survey involving catching many mice and categorizing their parasitic mites. It was published with her graduate adviser Richard B. Loomis, and his obituary listed many of his students who had careers in biology, Marilyn being the only woman included. Her nephew Dan, a radiologist, credits his aunt with instilling in him an interest in biology. A doctor, he worked in epidemiology at UCLA Medical Center, and recalls a colleague who specialized in mosquitoes and malaria asking him excitedly if he was related to the chigger expert Bunnell.

Dan added, “Marilyn was known for being a dynamic teacher. Being in her laboratory was an unbelievable and wonderful experience.” 

Her nephews also add that every camping and fishing trip with her was a biology lesson. The boys sometimes accompanied her on field work, including gathering specimens near Palo Verde on the Colorado River. She also led the family on hiking trips in Yosemite. She was an avid angler and still recalls catching a 6-foot halibut on one of her fishing trips to Alaska.

Her nephew Chuck, a retired pastor, remembers a poster on her bedroom wall “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” summing up her sense of humor and independence. Her other nephew John became an engineer with Southern California Edison, also crediting his aunt for his interest in science.

Marilyn and her family emphasize the central role of their Christian faith. She tells of her Italian grandmother, a Catholic (and a saint, allegedly) going to a tent revival where she sat on a rough log bench and heard the gospel for the first time from a protestant preacher. She “accepted the lord” and soon brought her husband and rest of the family into the fold. Marilyn has been a dedicated member of the Idyllwild Bible Church congregation.

Her many hobbies include stained glass; her living room features a majestic panorama of the local mountains, and her friends and nephews all treasure the pieces she has made for them. She also enjoys photography and woodworking.