Marion Marguerite Stokes was a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, access television producer, civil rights demonstrator, activist, librarian, and prolific archivist, especially known for her compulsive hoarding and archiving of hundreds of thousands of hours of television news footage spanning 35 years, from 1977 until her death in 2012, at which time she operated nine properties and three storage units.
13 Facts About Marion Stokes
2.
Marion Stokes had a husband and children, and family outings were planned around the length of a VHS tape.
3.
Later in life, when she was less agile, Marion Stokes trained a helper to do the task for her.
4.
Marion Stokes became convinced there was a lot of detail in the news at risk of disappearing forever, so she began taping.
5.
Marion Stokes's collection is not the only instance of massive television footage taping, but the care in preserving the collection is very unusual.
6.
Marion Stokes bought many Macintosh computers since the brand's inception, along with various other Apple peripherals.
7.
Marion Stokes kept the unopened items in a climate-controlled storage garage for posterity.
8.
Marion Stokes then allocated part of her profits to her recording project, which was important for her work, especially for the first few years when videotapes were a new, expensive technology.
9.
Marion Stokes received half a dozen daily newspapers and 100 to 150 monthly periodicals, collected for half a century.
10.
From 1967 to 1969, Marion Stokes co-produced a Sunday morning television show in Philadelphia, Input, with her husband John.
11.
Marion Stokes bequeathed her son Michael Metelits the entire tape collection, with no instructions other than to donate it to a charity of his choice.
12.
Marion Stokes has been called a pioneer and visionary who committed much of her life to preserving televisual history.
13.
Marion Stokes's final recording took place as she was dying; it captured coverage of the Sandy Hook massacre.