Marcia Martens Pierson, 72, of Ames passed away peacefully on December 28, 2012, at Bethany Manor in Story City. A memorial service will be held on a future date at the Collegiate United Methodist Church in Ames.

Marcia was born October 8, 1940, to Alvin and Clara (Wyatt) Martens in Manning, Iowa. She graduated from Manning High School in 1958, and then attended Iowa State University, where she received a B.A. in English in 1962. She went on to earn an M.A. in English Literature from Columbia University in New York in 1964 as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She married Bion Pierson at the United Methodist Church in Manning in June 1963, and then moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Bion was completing engineering graduate work.

Marcia loved literature, the arts, and the outdoors, and remained a writer, musician, and conservationist throughout her life. She taught English composition courses at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan, from 1963 to 1964, and worked as a freelance writer featuring children's stories and natural heritage topics while raising two children in Ames. In the mid-1980s she became a technical writer and editor in the Engineering College at Iowa State University, and she and Bion regularly co-taught an honors seminar at Iowa State on wilderness writing. She loved singing in the church choir, playing in bell choirs, and playing piano and recorder. She also enjoyed gardening, oil painting, camping, and travel. Her philanthropic activities included numerous church committees, work with international student families, the Story County Housing Board, and 4-H activities.

She is survived by her husband, Bion (Ames, Iowa); her brother, Gene (Yakima, Washington); two children, Bryce (Chaska, Minnesota) and Lia (Lexington, Virginia); and four grandchildren: Meghan and Jennifer (Chaska, Minnesota), and Cullen and Claire (Lexington, Virginia). She was preceded in death by her parents, Alvin and Clara Martens.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be sent in her memory to the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation or to the Music Ministries of the Collegiate United Methodist Church in Ames.