On A Roll With The Marble Lady
American Profile
Diana Lambdin Meyer
January 27, 2002
No one can accuse
Cathy Runyan of
“Cathy Runyan simply
is The Marble Lady,” says Gary Huxford, president of Marble Collectors Unlimited
and coordinator of the nation’s oldest consecutive marble meet where Runyan
often is a speaker and referee. “She is certainly one of the country’s most
respected authorities on marbles.”
As a child growing
up in
Soon Runyan fell in
love with the colors and designs of marbles. Her mother liked them also because
they were an inexpensive and quiet toy. They bought them at garage sales and
dime stores as the family moved around the country following her father’s higher
education career.
Years later, as the
mother of five, Runyan’s oldest daughter had an elementary school assignment to
write about games her parents played as children. The box of marbles came out of
the closet with all of the enthusiasm Runyan had felt as a child.
“I told my kids
‘This will be so much fun,’ as I dumped them out,” she recalls. “They just
looked at me and wondered where to plug them in.”
Runyan accompanied
her daughter to school with the project, teaching the second-graders how to
shoot the tiny glass balls. Other teachers asked Runyan to teach their classes,
then other schools began to call—along with churches, scout troops, and
libraries. The Marble Lady was born.
“Kids were
fascinated by her stories, and her enthusiasm was so contagious,” says Nancy
Gower, an elementary schoolteacher who taught all five of the Runyan children.
“As a teacher, it is invaluable to have a resource like Cathy.”
In their research
for her daughter’s classroom project, Runyan found very little written material
on the game of marbles or its history, which she found amazing since marbles are
the world’s oldest toys and can be documented in every major culture. So she set
out to write a small guidebook to donate to the schools and libraries at which
she spoke. Knuckles Down has sold more than 33,000 copies since 1985 and is in
its fourth printing.
Runyan has donated
hundreds of copies of the booklet and accompanying sets of marbles over the
years. Her generosity is how former PTA President Laurie Burgess remembers
Runyan. Burgess’ youngest son, Jeff, won a set of marbles donated by The Marble
Lady to an elementary school carnival, which began the collection of marbles he
maintains today at age 25.
“She is always so
gracious with her time and materials,” Burgess says. “She really wants other
people to love the game like she does.”
Runyan’s audience
has grown from local school groups to international corporations that fly her
around the world to teach about marbles. A Japanese biotech company, the Moritex
Corp., brought her to
“They told me they
felt children were growing up too entrenched in technology and they wanted me to
teach them the simplicity of life through marbles,” Runyan says.
Such is the theme of
Runyan’s second book, a work of fiction titled What Goes Round. The story, set
in rural
“Marbles are all
different and that’s what makes them so beautiful,” she says. “They are like
people. If they were all alike, we would have no need for more than one.”