Marlene Randanne de Vazeille

Marlene was born on April 28th, 1941 in Sieverstedt-Mühle, Germany to Ernst Herman Arp and Dora (née Bernsen). She was the youngest of two daughters. Marlene is survived by her sister Greta, her children Nathalie, Nicolas (Alison), and Aymeric (Kristen), and her grandchildren Cecilia, Paul, Cole, Vincent, Lucas, Camille, and Alexander.

Marlene’s father was a grain miller, working the family’s traditional farm and windmill. Her mother hailed from a prominent northern German farming family. Sadly, WWII took Marlene’s father when she was only six years old, as he died from tuberculosis, which he had caught in an American POW camp. Her mother’s three brothers died in Russia during the final months of the war.

For the next two decades, Marlene’s mother struggled to run the remote and wind-swept farm without the help of her deceased husband and brothers, all the while taking in refugees from Silesia and the Sudetenland (now the Czech Republic) without much help from her neighbors or family.

After many years of tirelessly toiling on the farm, Marlene’s mother took a big gamble and sold what was left of the farm and the mill and built one of the country’s first motels along the newly opened highway to Denmark.

Marlene was proud of her upbringing and loved the beauty of her home (Schleswig Holstein), but she had bigger ideas. Thus, after she graduated from her all-girls high school, Auguste-Viktoria in Flensburg,

Marlene set out to experience life as she had previously only seen in the movies.

In her first stop in Bern, Switzerland, where she worked as an au pair, she lived with a charming couple that ran a successful restaurant in the city. This introduced her to great cooking and new realities of modern life (the charming couple was made up of two men).

Her adventurous spirit took her to Paris and Spain, where she pursued language studies and learned to love different languages and cultures. Determined to succeed, Marlene earned a place at the translation school in Germersheim, majoring in Spanish and French.

Her mother and sister were overwhelmed with the running of the motel. Marlene decided to continue her studies at the University of Hamburg, closer to home, so she would be able to help out at the motel.

It was at their charming motel that Marlene met this charming, dark, and mysterious French-American man, her future husband Jacques. Maybe he reminded her of Rhett Butler from her favorite movie “Gone with the Wind”! This man, full of stories of castles, adventures, and the world, would a short time later become her husband, and the love of her life.

Jacques’ courtship phase consisted mainly of a charm campaign to win over Marlene’s mother and sister. He arguably was very good at it, as he was able to get their full endorsement and approval. The couple got engaged and married in less than a year, on May 7th, 1965.

The next decade saw Marlene following her husband to new and exotic locations to which his company sent him. From Northern Germany, he took Marlene to his new posting with NASA at Cape Canaveral in Florida, where their daughter Nathalie was born. After a short stint in Turkey, his next posting took the young couple to Sevilla, Spain. This is where their son Nicolas was born in May of 1968.

No matter what new places she found herself in, she dove headfirst into the local culture, forging new and often lifelong friendships, and learning the local languages. Especially in matters of cooking or fashion, Marlene made sure to absorb as much of her new surroundings as she could.

Having satiated their thirst for foreign travel, Jacques took a posting back in Germany to return Marlene closer to her mother and sister. It was there that their son Aymeric was born in 1973 at Wiesbaden AFB.

They enjoyed a rich, vibrant life in Germany, surrounded by cherished friends and providing their children with a multicultural upbringing that would leave a lasting impact on their lives. In 2003, after more than 30 years in Germany, Jacques and Marlene said goodbye to the long, gray winters and cold summers of the Rhineland in Germany and moved to Sarasota, Florida, where they made their new home and found many new friends.

It would not do it justice enough to say that Marlene had strong traditions woven into her DNA from her experiences during her farm upbringing and post-WWII Germany.

It was based on those traditions that she raised her three children. She taught them how to avoid wastefulness, especially when it came to food, as she understood the hard work and privations that went into being a farmer.

Marlene showed her love to her children, grandchildren, and friends through her cooking. Every Christmas -- 2024 was no exception -- she would stand in the kitchen for hours to make sure that her now grown children had their traditional Christmas meal, fondue Bourguignonne.

While Marlene could at times have a sharp tongue, it was dampened by her huge heart and never-ending ability to forgive. Her love and worry for her children were ever present till the very end. She never stopped being a mother.

The last four years of her life were sadly overshadowed by the immense grief she felt for having lost her husband. It is the knowledge that she is now reunited with her beloved “Chou-Chou” that warms our hearts and makes her sudden passing bearable.

Marlene, we will miss your strong opinions, your big heart, your good food, your elegance, and your class. Most of all we will miss this one truly genuine person in our lives who told us those things that we needed to hear, even if we did not want to hear them.

Her children will miss their mother and we all will miss our FRIEND…

A funeral service for Marlene will be held Thursday, February 6, 2025 at 10:00 AM at Saint Martha Catholic Church, 200 N Orange Ave, Sarasota, FL 34236. Following the funeral service will be a graveside service at 12:30 PM at Sarasota National Cemetery, 9810 State Rd 72, Sarasota, FL 34241.