Marla Kay Rose was a graduate of Shepherd High School and an avid painter. Marla most often painted using the “rub-out” technique. The difficult technique is a wipeout-style of underpainting that allows you to broadly push and pull values with a thin layer of paint that is free of sharp edges and ridges. After her death in 2006, her husband, Chester Rose, chose to donate a portion of her collection to students at Shepherd High School in hopes of motivating them to pursue a love of art as his wife did.

Raised in Shepherd, Marla was heavily involved in community activities and with Shepherd Public Schools, where both of her parents taught. In 2017, Chester created the Brattin Memorial Art Fund as a way to memorialize Marla and her parents, Harry and Jeannette Brattin. The fund will support art preservation and programming at Shepherd Public Schools.