Obituary of Marguerite L. Melander

MARGUERITE L. MELANDER August 9, 1928-April 20, 2013 Margi, as her family calls her, was born in North Park, Chicago, to Walter William and Marguerite Elizabeth Melander from Menominee, Michigan. To the end of her wonderful life, she treasured many happy memories and told many happy stories of her childhood years during the Great Depression. She enjoyed loving parents, but she particularly loved her dear Grandfather Melander. Marguerite graduated from Von Steuben High School in 1946 and after a variety of office jobs started a career with the National Truck Leasing System NTLS in the Loop. She never married but enjoyed family life so remained at home helping with household expenses and nurturing the intellectual life of her younger brother. Margi loved classical music and reading, especially history and the fiction of Thomas Mann. After leaving NTLS in the early 1970s, she earned a BA in history at Loyola University the Water Tower campus. Her father having died in 1972, Margi and her mother moved to an apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Margi earned an MA in German History at the University of Michigan. During her university years, she also learned German so she could read her beloved Mann novels in the language in which Mann wrote them. For almost two decades before retirement in 1995, she enjoyed selling advertising for the Ann Arbor Observer, where she relished her friendships with colleagues on the paper as well as with business owners in and around Ann Arbor. Upon her retirement, she bought a small RV, loaded her two cats and what she could of her belongings into it, and hit the road. Traveling ranked right up there with family/friends, reading, and music as the things she most loved in this world. Her first winter on the road, she stayed in Sequim, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula; "I've found paradise," she claimed. After four or five years on the road, she settled in a small trailer in the campground that had a "million-dollar-view" of the bay. After some debilitating illnesses and the onset of dementia, Margi moved to Rock Cove Assisted Living in Stevenson, Washington, where she could relax in the magnificent scenery of the Columbia River Gorge. Marguerite's survivors include her brother Don; her nieces and nephews Lisa, Heather, Christina and Zach, Jon and Jess, and Kate and Rob; her grand-nieces and nephews JT, Griffin, Lucy Jo, Cash, Benjamin, and Bobbi-Kate; her sisters-in-law Gretchen, Susan, and Helen; her cousins Verlee and Joan—all of whom are grateful for her loving care and nurture and all the good memories she's left us. Her love of friends made them her family; her love of family made them her friends. Private services will be held later. Straub's Funeral Home & Columbia River Cremation in Camas was in charge of the arrangements. To send condolences or to sign the online guest book please visit www.straubsfuneralhome.com.