Marilyn B. Strauss — 1944-2023
Marilyn B. Strauss
Marilyn B. Strauss of Pinecrest, Florida, died April 21, 2023, from metastatic renal cancer. She was 78 years old. Prior to her retirement in 2004, she had been an Assistant County Attorney for Miami-Dade County, where she had lived most of her life.
Marilyn attended Coral Gables Senior High School, graduating after her junior year, a year earlier than her peers. Her education continued at Stetson University, where again she graduated a year early, earning a B.S. in chemistry at the age of nineteen.
For a short time, Marilyn taught junior-high science in Fort Pierce, after which she entered the graduate school of Florida Atlantic University, earning an M.S. in chemistry. Marilyn then moved to the Atlanta area, not far from her sister Barbara, where she found work as a pesticide tester for the Georgia Department of Agriculture. (Women without a doctorate degree in the mid-1960s were not considered serious candidates when jobs for chemists became available. A guidance counselor even unjokingly suggested that Marilyn become a librarian in a chemistry library.)
Bored with pesticide testing and certain that there was untapped greatness in her, Marilyn went back to school — this time to study law at Florida State University. She was admitted to the Bar in 1975 and found immediate employment in a private law firm in Miami, where she stayed until the summer of 1978. That was when she was hired as an Assistant County Attorney for Miami-Dade County, becoming Florida Bar board-certified in workers’ compensation law. As an expert in the field, she served as chair of the Workers’ Compensation Subcommittee of The Florida Bar’s Appellate Court Rules Committee and on the Bar’s Board of Legal Specialization and Education. Her interest in workers’ compensation law never flagged — up until a month before her death she was still reading journal articles on the subject.
Marilyn served as an Assistant County Attorney until her retirement. The subsequent years were spent reading insatiably, raising orchids (she was treasurer of the South Florida Orchid Society), shopping for yarn, knitting, and traveling, especially if it involved a theater ticket. She attended every University of Miami football game, home and away, with her late husband, Jim McGuire. Marilyn and Jim’s passion for Hurricanes football was such that they even traveled across the country to the January 2002 Rose Bowl game, 2,800 miles away, to cheer the ’Canes on to the National Championship.
Marilyn’s stepdaughter, Christine McGuire, has expressed that Marilyn was the best gift that her father ever gave her and that she looked up to Marilyn from their first meeting. A longtime friend added that Marilyn had a spirit that was adventuresome, inquisitive and constantly learning, that she gave generously of her time and expertise to others, and that she was quintessentially kind and competent.
Marilyn is survived by Christine and husband Patrick Kuhn, sister Barbara Schanker and husband Joel, brother Robert Strauss and wife Nancy Borg, niece Rachel McBrien and husband Marc, nephew Nicholas Strauss, and innumerable in-laws, cousins, and friends.
There will be no formal funeral, as Marilyn has chosen to be cremated. In lieu of flowers, her wish was that contributions be made to the Innocence Project of Florida, Inc., 1100 East Park Avenue, Tallahassee, Florida 32301 — https://www.floridainnocence.org/about or your favorite charity.
