Marie Lamb was born Georgia Marie Coston, she never liked her first name, on March 12, 1931 in Bertie County North Carolina. She was the youngest daughter of sharecroppers John and Celia Coston. Nicknamed “Moody Gal” for her expressive face and uninhibited opinions, she joined her siblings in the fields picking cotton and tobacco by the time she was 13. Although the work was hard and her family often moved during her childhood, she acquired two of her strongest characteristics through it: resilience and endurance. These qualities served her well when she became a single mother of two boys in North Carolina in the 1950’s. Perhaps it was these qualities that inspired a young cab driver named Walter Lee Lamb to approach her when he saw her passing on the street. Perhaps it was because she was pretty, Either way, as she later told her children, Walter made her laugh, and he was the only man that was good to her. So they married and moved to New York City a few years later with four boys and the hope for a better life up north. That hope first landed them in a tenement on Webster Avenue in the Bronx and later in the projects on Tinton Avenue. As her family grew to six boys, she continued to display the endurance and resiliency that carried her from the fields of North Carolina. Those qualities were never more necessary than in 1975 when she lost her husband and both of her parents. Now a widow with two young boys and four older ones, she, nevertheless, maintained stability and never allowed her young boys to feel unmoored. She simply carried on with the routine of life, the cooking, the cleaning. She did these things not just because they were necessary but because through them she expressed her love. Through the solace of the routine she modeled an approach to life that would sustain her and her family through joys such as the marriages of her children and the births of grandchildren. It would also sustain her through further tragedies such as the deaths of siblings and three children. Even later when Alzheimer’s disease was ravishing her mind she continued to ask after her babies, always thinking of them, always wanting to know that they were well. Marie’s memory will live on through her surviving sons: Walter Lee Lamb, Jr., Kenneth Samuel Lamb and Philip Lamb. Her grandchildren: Kerry Coston Jr., Lavaughn Jason Coston, Nakita Lamb, Vivian Sarah Lamb, Roy Lamb, Josiah Mitchell, Skyless Randall and her older sister Bessie Hayes.