Family members, friends and former co-workers are mourning the death of Sault Ste. Marie’s Marie Arcangeletti, who died after a battle with cancer at Hospice Niagara April 17.
She was 68.
Arcangeletti was a retired and well respected Algoma District School Board (ADSB) teacher and Musical Comedy Guild of Sault Ste. Marie director.
Carole McPhee, now a retired ADSB superintendent, told SooToday “Marie (as a teacher) was a very dynamic lady. She was an excellent teacher, a great team player with a great sense of humour. The kids loved her.”
Known as ‘Mrs. Arc’ in the classroom, McPhee said, “she didn’t put up with any guff from the kids.”
That aside, McPhee recalled “she still had a nice manner with the kids. The kids always came first.”
“The kids really appreciated her. They enjoyed being in her class.”
“She had a really good sense of humour,” McPhee said.
As an example, McPhee recalled a time when Arcangeletti and a fellow teacher at Collegiate French Immersion were playing with water pistols inside the school while the school’s students were outside taking part in the annual ‘play day.’
“They had to pick themselves up from the floor from laughing so hard,” McPhee said.
Joanne Atkinson, a retired ADSB principal, recalled “we met when Collegiate was a French Immersion School. I did the morning in French, she did the afternoon in English.”
“We meshed so well. She was a visionary. She always knew where she was headed. Whatever project she took on, she could see the end product of it and worked really hard toward that. That's something I really admired about her.”
Of Arcangeletti’s work with the Musical Comedy Guild, McPhee said, “she was a perfectionist.”
“Whenever she put on a play, it was professionally done,” McPhee said, recalling her ability to get many school board staff members to get involved in her direction of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
“I met Marie in 1993,” said Louise Stephens, Sault Ste. Marie Musical Comedy Guild’s current president.
“At the time the board had decided on Anne of Green Gables as their fall show and they were looking for a director. We had heard about an elementary school teacher (Arcangeletti) who had done some pretty big shows with her school.”
Until then, Arcangeletti had worked solely with elementary school level productions, but the Guild persuaded her to give a larger scale show a shot as director.
She took on the task of Anne of Green Gables director with enthusiasm and dedication.
The show was presented at the Sault Community Theatre Centre.
It was an excellent directorial debut, by all accounts.
“A local critic said she was a first time director who deserved credit for managing such professional treatment of the material. So right out of the gate, she did a great job,” Stephens said.
“She did really big shows for us. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat went over so well. That had a cast of about 100, including a choir of little kids. It was so popular we had to keep adding more shows.”
Arcangeletti also worked on the Musical Comedy Guild’s production of Peter Pan.
“She had this gift of being able to move big numbers of people around the stage without it looking like some sort of parade. She made it look so organic, so natural,” Stephens said.
“She was extremely organized, but always calm, always organized, always positive.”
And inclusive.
”She had a child come out to audition in a wheelchair. She cast her in a show which included animal characters. She cast her as a snail. The wheel of her chair became her spiral shell! She was so inclusive and so clever and so creative.”
“She had this funny little giggle. She was disciplined, she was organized, but she never came across as bossy.”
Arcangeletti worked with her husband Jim on several stage productions.
Friends and former coworkers remember Arcangeletti as someone who still had a lot to give and as someone who will be missed.
Arcangeletti’s obituary may be found by clicking here.