Biography: Marylyn Jackson Parins, Professor of English (retired, but still willing to correct your grammar and syntax), died Sunday, June 9, 2024, after a long illness. She was 85.
 
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1939, she was the oldest of the three children of Ewing and Arline Jackson. She attended public school in Little Rock and Fayetteville, where she graduated as valedictorian from Fayetteville High School. For her first two years of college, she attended Sweet Briar College in Virginia. She later transferred to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and graduated third in her class.
 
She returned to Little Rock to marry in 1964 and joined the English Department at UALR and taught for 44 years. She earned her master's degree at Stanford University and earned a PhD from the University of Michigan. In 1988, she published Malory: The Critical Heritage and wrote numerous articles on Arthurian scholarship and on expurgated editions of Malory. To pass her Chaucer class, students had to recite to her in Middle English the opening lines of The Canterbury Tales ("Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,/The droghte of March hath perced to the roote...").
 
She was a member of both the Aesthetic Club of Little Rock and Edelweiss Study Group. Known as the tutor-trainer guru, she was active in Literacy Action Arkansas, teaching students to read and others how to teach reading. She volunteered at the Sequoyah National Research Center, which her husband co-founded with Daniel F. Littlefield, and helped in the American Native Press Archives until the last year of her life. She was an avid traveler and visited more than 30 countries. Three things of note include that after college, she planned to travel with the Peace Corps to Iran. To be approved, she tread water in a cold lake for more than five hours, which was longer than any other applicant being tested at the time.
 
In 1983, she met the Queen Mother when her husband was on a Fulbright Exchange in England and described it as one of the most memorable times of her life. For a short time, she dated Charles Portis, the author of True Grit. As her brother Andy often said “Marylyn got the brains, Andy got the good looks, and James got the golf swing.”
 
Preceding her in death were her parents, Ewing and Arline Jackson, and her husband, James W. Parins. She is survived by her children, James (Ruxandra) Brady, son, Claire (Matt Gronwold), stepdaughter, Craig, stepson, four grandchildren, Roland Brady, Stephanie, Faithe, and Cassidy Parins. Also surviving  her are two siblings, Andy (Jenny) Jackson, and James (Dana Kay) Jackson, and 56 Parins and Jackson nieces and nephews.
 
A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 22, 2024, at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, preceded by a private family burial at Mount Holly Cemetery. There will be a reception following the service at Morrison Hall. Memorials may be made to the Sequoyah National Research Center at UALR (http://ualr.edu/sequoyah). Arrangements by Ruebel Funeral Home, RuebelFuneralHome.com