My family lost our storyteller. Margery Palmer Delano’s last yarn was snipped at around 12:30 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 15 in Solomons Maryland, after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 90.
Born Dec. 11, 1931 in Winchester, Mass., she was the second daughter of William and Louise Delano (nee Davison).
Margery grew up in Reading, Mass., the product of what she liked to call “impoverished New England gentry.” But neither finances nor the strictures of her Protestant upbringing could hold back the flamboyant “Miss Margery.”
Whether dressed in her drum majorette duds or outlandish flowing gowns, including gloves, oversized hand-made hats and, of course, feather boas, she loved being the center of attention.
Margery broke her New England bonds, first working as a nurse in Bermuda, and later on a Northern Pacific Railway. It was in Seattle that she met Bob Mellen, another New Englander with a sense of wanderlust and adventure, who traveled to Washington to climb Mt. Rainier.
Margery and Bob had two children, Robert Gregory Mellen Jr., and Andrea Louise St. Marie (nee Mellen).
When Bob worked for Catholic Relief Services and later USAID, Margery and the children traveled along to Nigeria, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand. It was in these travels to far off lands that Margery gathered many of her stories, like burnished stone that she shined and buffed with each telling. And retelling, and retelling. At family gatherings, at social events, with random strangers, she would sit down and recount some past event. When finished she would slap her knee and let out a laugh.
Without an ounce of restraint, self-editing was never in Margery’s quiver, she would regale. Like when she lost track of her daughter in a department store in Hong Kong, only to find her playing in the front window display. Or her son playing toy soldiers with the imposing African night watchman outside of Lagos, Nigeria.
Margery’s outward outlandishness was undergirded by a life of service. She had a long career as a nurse and even long after she retired cared for ailing neighbors in Florida.
She was also an AARP Safe Driving instructor, which might surprise those who survived her white-knuckle car trips, a senior aerobics instructor, and sang and signed with the choir at her Unitarian Church in Florida. She also corresponded with a variety of inmates, again sharing with them her many and various tales. One of those inmates, “Element,” sent a then 80-something grandmother a photo of himself and another inmate half-clad showing off their cartoonishly developed upper bodies in the prison weight yard.
Margery’s battle with dementia was possibly the meanest blow in her life, as it slowly stripped away those memories she so loved to share. The isolation of the pandemic and accessibility of doctors only hastened the process. A stroke earlier this year blew her mind into confetti, robbing her of most of her speech.
However, even in her last days, she could still sing some of her favorite songs, recite parts of her favorite poem, “The Lion and Albert,” and say “I love you.”
I will miss her more than I can say.
Margery is survived by Robert Gregory Mellen Jr. and Andrea (Brian) St. Marie; grandchildren Cailee Mellen, Sabrina (Mark) Jackson, and Tara (Christopher) Hanneman; brother-in-law Richard Mellen; and six great grandchildren, Isabelle and Killian Jackson, Chloe, Sadie, Benjamib and Micah Hanneman.
A private family memorial will be held at a later date.