I’ve been writing with Tri-City Voice since 2019. When I got here, Bill and Sharon Marshak were the soul of the paper. You couldn’t think of Tri-City Voice without Bill and Sharon, or Bill and Sharon without immediately mentioning Tri-City Voice. You also couldn’t say Bill without immediately adding Sharon.
In 2024, Bill and Sharon departed from the paper to enjoy a well deserved retirement in Idaho. That feels like an eyeblink ago, but early in 2026 we said another goodbye as Sharon passed away in hospice care.
Bill was beside her, along with other family members. But her death in Idaho was also felt here in Fremont at the Tri-City Voice office where she spent so many lively years.
Researching this tribute, I looked up an interview Bill and Sharon did with The Fremont Podcast, hosted by Ricky B., back in 2022, when they were looking back on Tri-City Voice’s 20th anniversary.
“Every day was something different we were learning about,” Sharon said. “So we didn’t stop to think we were tired, is this overwhelming, can we keep doing this. We just kept growing.”
Sharon was the impetus for both the couple moving to Fremont in 1996, and getting into local journalism. After going back to school for computer graphics and multimedia, she landed a job in Milpitas as a production manager, in part based on a newspaper mockup she had made on Quark. She didn’t say that the experience of working on the project was horrendous and she never wanted to do it again.
She used Quark to put Tri-City Voice together up until her retirement.
In the podcast she also confided, “I knew nothing about production. I didn’t even know what a printer, a press looked like.”
The Marshaks went on to start a newsletter to highlight events in the Tri-City area, which eventually grew into a full newspaper that covered events, government, business, local history and the East Bay’s diverse community. Bill was in charge of content, while Sharon did design, production, sales and marketing.
Bill had his opinions on what stories to include, but much of the paper’s “voice” comes from Sharon’s style. Part of the original vision was that the paper would let people know about events before they happened—and Sharon made sure the story was told visually as well as in words, using photos from previous years’ events or dress rehearsals so there was something fun to look at as well as read about.
Sharon always wanted us to use photos of people—all kinds of people having fun together. She especially loved including pictures of kids and young people to show that the community highlighted in the paper was for all ages. When I look back at the pages she designed, I see color, action and many eye-catching fonts.
She was in the office nearly every day, putting the 40-some pages together. Sometimes she had two assistants, sometimes only one. If the other person was out sick or on vacation, she would get the job done all by herself. The paper was a puzzle she had assembled so many times it was second nature.
She also did all this while dyslexic. We helped her catch typos, but sometimes one got past all of us to some embarrassment and much hilarity.
In addition to her work on the paper, Sharon was active in the community and supported progressive candidates.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the paper was Sharon Marshak’s life for 20 years. Bill had freelancers and editors who could take over almost everything as his eyesight failed in later years. Sharon could and did do everything herself.
In the podcast, Sharon also recalled working at the paper, “24 hours a day, seven days a week, for 20 years.” She said, “We haven’t had a day off.”
As much as I appreciate how both Bill and Sharon started Tri-City Voice, which is now my own full-time job, I wish they had gotten more days off together.
