Marilyn Moore, MT(AAB), 71, passed away on November 12, 2018, in Mount Carmel, Indiana.

Ms. Moore’s laboratory career began in 1967 after a two-year medical technology course at the University of Evansville, in Evansville, Indiana. Her first full-time laboratory job was at Wabash General Hospital from June 1967 – June 1969. In October 1969 she began working for Dr. Charles M. Sinn as chief of the hematology section and “all around bench tech” at Evansville Internal Medicine Associates.

In 1974 the first regulations under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act of 1967 (CLIA ’67) were published. Those rules required a four-year college degree with a major in a laboratory science to qualify as a medical technologist (MT). Those who didn’t have a four-year college degree, including Ms. Moore, could qualify by passing a “Proficiency Examination” administered by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare [HEW – now the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)].

Marilyn passed the HEW Proficiency Examination in 1975, the first year it was given, which qualified her as a medical technologist under the CLIA ’67 regulations. In 1973 Marilyn joined the American Medical Technologists (AMT) but AMT only recognized her as a technician (MLT), not a technologist (MT).

Upon learning that the International Society for Clinical Laboratory Technology (ISCLT) would certify her as a technologist (MT) by virtue of having passed the HEW Proficiency Examination, she joined ISCLT in April 1976. Her husband, Steve Moore, whom she married in 1968, was also an ISCLT certified medical technologist, and they worked together on many association activities. Steve Moore passed away in August 2011 following a lengthy illness.

A natural leader, Marilyn immediately became active in ISCLT’s Indiana Chapter, and just two years later, in 1978, she was elected to ISCLT’s National Board of Directors. Recalling her election to the Board in 1978 Marilyn said that she was “green as a freshman” in the ways of ISCLT’s National Board and its mode of operations. She also remembered a certain ISCLT member telling her, before the Board Member elections, that she “didn’t know anything at all and who did she think she was even to consider herself eligible to serve this Society (ISCLT).” Marilyn’s responded as follows: “Well – there is no reference to ‘intelligence’ in the (ISCLT) Bylaws section on eligibility for office.” You might think she was taking a jab at herself, but we believe she was really referring, correctly in our opinion, to some individuals on the ISCLT Board who didn’t like her running for office. She won that election, and eventually was elected President of ISCLT from 1991 – 1993.

In 1989 she was appointed to the Board of Directors of ISCLT’s certifying board, known as the ISCLT Credentialing Commission, a position she held for just under thirty years, until her passing in November 2018.

Ms. Moore was a member of ISCLT/AAB for 42 years. She was a strong advocate for “alternative routes” to an exclusive 4-year degree requirement for medical technologists (MTs); recognition of the AAB Board of Registry’s certification program by state licensing agencies; “equal pay for equal work” in the clinical laboratory industry; and expanding opportunities in the private sector for military-trained laboratorians.

Ms. Moore always contributed her time and energy to improving the Society, and she was always helping and encouraging individual members. In her later years she encountered significant health issues, but helped out as best she could.