By Mike Weland
Not many know it, but there’s a street in Bonners Ferry named for a diminutive human dynamo whose smile and boundless energy brightened the community she adopted like a tiny second sun. Marciavee Cossette, 91, passed away last night at Sunset Home Assisted Living.
Known for years as “The Worm Lady,” she was a regular fixture at the Bonners Ferry Farmers Market, extolling the benefits of earthworms. Spokesman Review reporter Laura Umthun interviewed her, publishing “The Worm Lady” February 20, 2010.
“‘Marciavee Cossette talks to her Georgia Redworms with the same passion that other people talk to their plants; worms are her friends and her business,’ Umthun wrote. ‘Cossette calls herself ‘The Worm Lady,’ and is the owner of an eco-friendly worm fertilizer business that harnesses the excess waste produced by earthworms and sells it by mail order and at the Boundary County Farmer’s Market. ‘I feed the worms; they produce fertilizer that I give to my plants. I grow the plants, harvest the crop, and the cycle starts again,’ Cossette says.'”
For several years, planters appeared on city sidewalks in the spring as if by magic, flowers blooming profusely in the rich loam, you’d see her in the early morning, shaded by a bonnet, lavishing love and water to keep both the plants and those who enjoyed them happy. She was tiny, but a huge part of GROW, whose members celebrated her birthday with her years, and may well continue as a community event.
Marciavee was everywhere, and everywhere you happened to bump into her, she was effusive, sprightly, happy to see you and happy to be seen.
She was a regular feature at Bonners Ferry City Council and Rotary Club meetings and at nearly every parade or shindig occurring in town … most often in colorful costume befitting the occasion. For years, she was the main attraction at the Special Olympics Penguin Plunge, with people coming not because they wanted to freeze for the cause, but to see what Marciavee was wearing that year and would feel ashamed if they didn’t sprout a few goosebumps, too. She served on the Boundary County P&Z Commission for many years. She dined regularly with her many friends at the Bonners Ferry Senior Center until she was hospitalized after a fall this winter and moved to Sunset Home, where she remained as impish and mentally vibrant as ever.
It is doubtful any one person in Boundary County could name all the places Marciavee enlivened … it is doubtful anyone could have kept up with her at all.
On November 1, 2011, the Bonners Ferry City Council met and as was usual, Marciavee was there. Discussion was being held on an amended plat of the Maxwell Acre Tracts between Super One Foods and the old Co-op. Surveyor John Marquette was there to explain the details, Jerry Lewis from ITD was on hand and all the details had been ironed out. Councilman Mike Klaus made motion to approve the amended plat as presented but city administrator Stephen Boorman recommended that a short, one-block street traversing the field behind Subway and connecting the Super 1 parking lot and Kennedy Street should have a name.
Some who were there recall council president Chris Clark needed hardly a moment’s thought to recommend “Cossette Street.”
“There were several reasons it felt fitting,” Chris remembers. “Maricavee was a very gracious lady who was very involved, and she almost always brought treats, always went above and beyond.”
And while it was her community involvement that gained her the most notice, the nursing care she provided quietly behind the scenes enabled many elderly to spend their last days in dignity, in the company of their families, at peace.
Even with the sun breaking occasionally to show off the spring leaves just breaking out from their buds in just the slightest hint of green, it seems a little darker today, a little more somber. As if the light of a small, diminutive sun that shone for us and us alone flickered and dimmed slowly to darkness.
