Carolyna Mae Huffnagle Marks was born January 13, 1942 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She died May 17, 2011 at Kaiser Oakland after a long illness. She was married to Rev. Bruce S. Marks in Philadelphia in 1961. She is survived by her son Mano Marks of San Francisco. Carolyna attended UC Berkeley and received her BA & MA in art.
Carolyna Marks held joint membership in Strawberry Creek Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, joining in July, 1997, and in Downs Memorial Church of Oakland, CA. Her joint membership reflected her life commitments to peace and racial justice. At Strawberry Creek Monthly Meeting she served on the Peace and Social Witness and Retreat Committees.
A prominent artist and peace activist, Carolyna was the founder & director of The World Wall for Peace which she established in 1983 and had worked with local communities to build peace walls in Russia, Israel, Japan, South Africa, and six states in the United States. 15 walls still exist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Carolyna’s work was to build a wall to encase and protect the world, the tiles produced by thousands of children who went through weeks of peace empowerment process to produce the tiles and to work through a unique experiential method showing the power of love and non-violence. Carolyna had written that “people should be happy with creating rather than destroying….People associate me with the walls but I want them to understand that the walls are a process and they cement the process on to the wall in their tiles.” She was “ not one to be discouraged: ‘Rise above it’ is my philosophy, yeah, I’m sad about things in the world. But I rise above it!”
At her July 16, 2011 memorial service held jointly by Strawberry Creek and Downs Memorial Church, several spoke of her unswerving focus and tendency to “trust in the universe” when obstacles arose. Those present sang We Are Marching in the Light of God, a Zulu hymn that was a favorite of Carolyna’s from the South Africa wall trip in which several Downs Memorial congregants had participated.
A refrain from her Peace Empowerment Process illustrates her life’s message for those living in and through a most violent world: “My name is peace, My name is power, My name is Carolyna.”