Living Eulogy for Marion Merrill

Next Tuesday I am driving east and after visiting a few friends, including former fellow grad student Ray Smock, will attend a "Living Eulogy" in Hockessin, Delaware, for 95 year-old Marion Merrill, the widow of my PhD adviser H. Samuel Merrill. Sam was an avuncular, devoted scholar who was much beloved. After I started teaching at IU Northwest, he and Marion would stop overnight at a motel near our house for a vist with us on their way to visit his relatives in Wisconsin. Other former grad students were also on their route. Here's what I plan to say:

Living Eulogy for Marion Merrill by James B. Lane
Marion Merrill and her husband Sam were wonderful mentors. They were role models both in terms of personal and professional development. First and foremost, the Merrills showed me the positive effect a caring teacher can have. To be a Merrill student, as we privileged Maryland grad students called ourselves, was almost like being their adopted offspring. They guided us, prodded us, tried to keep our heads on straight (after all, it was the Sixties), made us aware of what other Merrill students who came before us were doing, and helped us get jobs when we graduated. I love the fact that the Maryland History Department has a Merrill Seminar Room, but the irony is that Merrill seminars took place at Sam and Marion’s house, with Marion’s cookies served at the break.

Second, Sam and Marion had a far-reaching influence on my political thinking. They were progressives - Flaming liberals in the best sense of the connotation - passionately dedicated to civil rights and world peace. Sam took part in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March and was with me at the 1969 Moratorium Rally against the Vietnam War. Marion involved herself in a successful fight to free an African-American teenager convicted of rape after he had consensual sex with a white girlfriend. Marion used to drive neighbors’ maids back to their homes in Washington, D.C., so they wouldn’t have to go through the cost and inconvenience of public transportation. My liberal beliefs, to a large extent, are due to the Merrills. When Barack Obama was elected President, I immediately thought of how happy Marion would be.

Finally, the Merrills influenced my growth as a historian, not only making me mindful of how to write, according to guidelines known to us grad students as Merrill’s rules (no passive voice was number one), but showing me how exciting original research can be. At the Library of Congress while working on my dissertation on urban reformer Jacob A. Riis (a subject they suggested) I frequently had lunch with friends of theirs who were some of the most famous historians in my field, such as Allen Davis and Elliott Rudwick.

In 1971 Sam and Marion co-authored "The Republican Command, 1897-1913." My copy is inscribed “For Jim, One of our very favorite historians and persons. And with affection for Toni, Philip, and David.” (my wife and two sons). The jacket describes Marion Galbraith Merrill as “experienced in manuscript research and especially interested in the record of political successes and failures to alleviate poverty and improve race relations.” In the preface they wrote, “Our concern with the unnecessary suffering, waste, and danger which legislative inadequacy perpetuates in our society prompted us to make this study.” Those words ring just as true today. On the acknowledgements page Marion attributed much of her intellectual development to the patience of Mrs. Lila Fisher Woodbury and Osman P. Hatch, in her words two “exceptional teachers in a two-room school in Passumpsic, Vermont,” where they led a little girl gently by the hand into the magical world of books and free inquiry.” Just as Marion owed them, in her words, “a lifelong debt,” so do we Merrill students owe a lifelong debt to her. How fortunate I am to have known her.