Ashtenfelter, Marsha

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Revision as of 15:58, 11 February 2010

Marsha Ashtenfelter is first a girlfriend and later wife of Danny Evachevski in the Spearfish Lake Tales. The couple are divorcing as of December 2000. Marsha and her younger sister, Amy, were summer visitors to Spearfish Lake, from Camden.

Marsha and Danny had "known each other since they’d been kids in day care, back in the early seventies,"^SQ02 The Ashtenfelters and the Evachevskis both belonged to the West Turtle Lake Club and their parents own cottages near each other.^BAR33 The sisters spent their summers growing up at the nudist camp, so when Marsha borrowed one "It was clear that she wasn't used to wearing a swimsuit."^BAR44

The relationship between Danny and Marsha as kids could best be described as one of toleration. The pair only started going together in the summer of 1987 because her sister, Amy, and his best friend, Josh Archer, started dating. Their first double date was cut short by an accident that had the kids saving the lives of Ed Sloat and his wife Jill.^BAR42 The incident tied the two couples together. "Danny and Marsha had known each other since they were babies, and had fought with each other about as long. Now, all of a sudden, they were good buddies."^BAR47

While the foursome continued their double dating the summer of 1988, the dynamics had changed. Both Marsha and Amy knew they were expected to follow in their father's footsteps and go to Athens University^BAR58 and Danny expected to follow, but Josh did not. It was during this second summer together that Danny and Marsha finally took each other's virginities.^SQ02

Marsha and Dan went off to Athens together and in the Spring of 1990, Danny gave her a ring with a plan to wait until graduation for a wedding. The sisters spent that summer in Europe.^RM01 Despite their talk to move into an apartment together in Athens, they never did.^SQ02

Marsha married Danny the month after they graduated. While Danny had a job lined up in Camden, Marsha convinced him to take a different job in Florida, working for a company partially owned by her grandfather. Marsha tried her hand at business with a "distributing company for a new line of herbal supplements," but she wasn't able to get the startup money nor endorsements from her sister-in-law as hoped.^SQ02

At the time of Facing the Storm their marriage is on the rocks and maybe headed for divorce, an eventuality that would not sadden Dan's siblings or his best friend Josh. As Jennifer said, "But why should we louse up a pleasant social dinner by having Marsha around?"^FtS38

Marsha has been described as looking "Sorta like Brandy, but with black hair in a butch cut...She's kind of a jockette, like Brandy, too."^BAR41 Josh's opinion was that "Marsha's voice had an unpleasant note to it"^BAR42 Danny and Marsha competed in volleyball at the West Turtle Lake Club and the Spearfish Lake city tournaments, starting in High School.^BAR73 The pair managed to beat Kirsten and Mike McMahon in the finals of the Spearfish Lake mixed doubles championship in 1987.^AF29

The Ashtenfelter family are strict vegetarians,^BAR33 although after the dramatic rescue of Ed Sloat, both sisters craved a hamburger as a reward.^BAR42 The family was known to take vacations at a nudist resort in Florida. It is thought the girls' grandfather has a cottage there.^BAR104