Rodney was a lawyer who fought successfully for equal pay for women before the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Mildred was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and Marvin consecrated as a "White Ribbon Baby" who did not taste "demon rum" until he was 25 and halfway through graduate school.
Intending to enter law school and join father's practice, he found a job counseling engineering students on probation which required that he enroll in a course in vocational and occupational therapy with Donald G. Paterson (1892-1961).
In addition to 3M, his clients included IBM, Honeywell, Sears, Caterpillar, Ford Motor Company, Office of Naval Research, US Marine Corps, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and others.
In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on “Mainstream Science on Intelligence,[2]” a public statement written by Linda Gottfredson, published in response to popular criticism of the conclusions presented in the controversial book The Bell Curve.