Wade Marbaugh is an Ohio native who moved to Atlanta in 1986 to write for a local newspaper. He subsequently married the editor who hired him, Stell Simonton. Wade has been attending the First Existentialist Congregation with Stell since the early 1990s and currently serves on the Board of Trustees. In that capacity. he headed the committee that drafted the First E’s Land Acknowledgement Statement, which is the topic of Wade’s Celebration of Life presentation.
Professionally, he has served in many roles, but his passion is writing. As a newspaper reporter, he received several professional awards and he has placed in creative writing contests. He has written several plays for local stages, a novel, various TV series episodes, screenplays, and short stories. A writing project begun in 1976 required extensive research on little-known histories of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas as well as visits with Indigenous People and attendance in traditional ceremonies. A theme of his Celebration of Life presentation will be “To control the future, understand the present; to understand the present, know the past.”