Marilyn Jean Romaneski

Intelligent, loyal, gracious, kind and loving are words that identified Marilyn Romaneski. As a career missionary with Cadence International, she and her husband directed Christian Hospitality houses in Spain, Italy and Germany. She loved military people and their family members, and she enjoyed listening to their hopes and aspirations, never missing a n opportunity to introduce others to the Lord Jesus. She practiced hospitality with a generous heart, offering home cooked meals and a place to stay for off duty soldiers.

Born Marilyn Jean Sogergren on May 28th, 1929 in Mankato, Minnesota, she grew up in a pastor’s family with two siblings: Carl Judson Sodergren and Marcia Sodergren Ford. When Marilyn’s father accepted a new church in the west, the family moved to Portland, Oregon. . Marilyn always thought of Portland as her “home town.” She, like her brother and sister, graduated from Lincoln high school in Portland. Marilyn completed her college education at Lewis and Clark College.

In 1943, she met her future husband, Albert Leo Romaneski at the same high school. They remained friends for the succeeding years and married on August 8, 1950, which was also the anniversary of Marilyn’s parents, Reverend Carl Sodergren and his wife Eunice.

Marilyn loved military life, and eagerly accompanied her husband on his various assignments to foreign countries such as Germany, Sweden and Panama. When her husband was away on unaccompanied assignments in Vietnam and Africa, she managed her family with consummate skill and cheerfulness. She was the ideal military wife. Her family legacy consists of three children and their spouses, eleven grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. She was deeply devoted to her family even as she was to her missionary calling later in life.

One military friend wrote, ”Marilyn and Albert Leo have long served as a missionary team in the Cadence organization; and they spent many, many sojourns in foreign nations near the gates of military bases, hosting ‘homes away from home’ where military men and women could go off base to find a wholesome place to enjoy a home cooked meal prepared by Marilyn with Al's assistance, sleep in a clean bed with linen washed by Al and Marilyn, just relax and read a book, or take part in a Bible study , enjoy some of Marilyn's cookies, and, in every way possible, find a Christian atmosphere within the house provided by Cadence and operated by Albert Leo and Marilyn. They did this in Germany, Italy, and Spain at numerous bases time after time after time. Marilyn was a true servant of our Lord Jesus Christ, a real testimony to His teachings who demonstrated her love for her fellow man by her selfless work as a Cadence Missionary and in ALL that she did. For Marilyn, Christianity was a way of living, seven days a week.”