Memorial Service for Marion Farrell is June 1

A memorial service will be held June 1 at First Presbyterian Church in Ossining for Marion Farrell, the parishioner who led the Ossining Prison Ministries program for many years at Sing Sing.

Marion Ishbel Duncan Farrell died April 28. she was 79. 

According to The Ossining Gazette, Farrell came to the United States in 1964 on a visitor's visa from her native Great Britain. But she got a job on Wall Street and stayed. 

Moving to Ossining, she became an active member of First Presbyterian Church, from singing in the choir to running the annual Thanksgiving dinner, which serves several hundred people with the help of a horde of volunteer cooks, servers and dishwashers. 

But the Prison Ministries, where she was executive director for 20 years, was her great contribution to the community and to New York. 

Every Saturday and Sunday morning, one or two of Farrell's volunteers sets up a card table, plugs in the coffee maker, and lays out juices, breakfast treats and cereal in the visitors' intake building at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

Families and friends of inmates, many of whom have traveled for hours, stream into the trailer and take seats on the long benches, waiting their turn to be processed into the prison's visitors center.

The volunteers—who come from various churches and organizations in the area—offer a little bit of something to the visitors and the officers behind the tall counter. They dish up bowls of cereal to the often restless children. Specially-trained volunteers also staff a special play area for the children inside the visitors center. 

Farrell believed their work offered help and dignity to the inmates' visitors and added humanity to the process—something needed by everyone including prisoners and officers. 

In 1995 she told the New York Times: "Why make the families suffer, just because they have someone in prison? They're not guilty of anything."

She not only took turns staffing the breakfast table and play area but also participated in the church's prison Bible study.
"Marion's death has left the prison community distraught," said Deacon Dorothee Caulfield, one of the many volunteers in the program. "Everyone: the administration, corrections officers, visitors, inmates and volunteers all loved and respected her without equal. Her service to Sing Sing was invaluable and I think this loss will be felt for many years."

According to the Gazette, she is survived by her daughter Julie, sisters Morag and Fiona, and many nieces and nephews. 

The service starts at 3 p.m. June 1 at First Presbyterian, 34 S. Highland Ave. A reception will follow.