MAGNOLIA: Myron “Mike” Markell, died peacefully early Sunday, July 12, after having suffered a stroke. He was 84 years old, and had spent the previous two weeks with the constant companionship of his soul-mate and wife, Barbara, and beloved children, Claire Parkhurst and Joseph Loffredo.
Mike was born in Brookline on April 20, 1925, to Marcia and Sam Markell. He attended public schools in Brookline before starting college at MIT: an aptitude test (to his surprise) had identified him as a future engineer. Mike’s college career was interrupted by his Army service, and resumed again at Harvard, where he earned A.B. and M.B.A. degrees and turned his sights to business, for which—to no one’s surprise—he had considerable aptitude.
Mike joined the Army in 1943. Not long after shipping out with the 84th Infantry Division, he was grievously wounded at Geilenkirken, near the Siegfried Line, and spent more than a year recuperating in hospitals in England and the United States. His experience in World War II helped shape the rest of his life: his identity as a disabled veteran, his intense mistrust of war as a solution, his compassion for those caught in the whirlpool of war. The war also provided him one of his great lifelong friendships, with a London boy who was sent to live with the Markell family in Brookline during the Blitz.
Mike spent his working career with Aon, selling insurance. He spent his second career as a volunteer when he and Barbara moved to Magnolia upon his retirement. He was an indefatigable researcher for the Gloucester Archives who worked especially hard on the Gloucester Fishermen’s Memorial project to identify those who had lost their lives at sea. For many years he and Barbara also helped organize and run the annual Magnolia Road Race, and together they also helped run the Magnolia Library Art Show held every summer.
Mike was a fixture in his community, familiar to those who knew him for his volunteer work and generous support of local civic and arts organizations, and to strangers and friends alike for his old-fashioned captain’s beard and what one of his many local friends called his “bad imitation of an old curmudgeon,” especially in his straight-from-the-hip pronouncements about world and national politics: he wore his convictions proudly. His cultivated crustiness helped spur others around him to do the right thing, as when he tartly reminded Archives visitors with genealogical inquiries that their donations would be well used at the all-volunteer organization.
But as all who knew him also knew, Mike was a marshmallow inside, a great softy whose crusty pronouncements about the state of the world—many of which are unsuitable to print in a family newspaper—never stopped him from hoping better for its future or donating time or money to make the better happen; and whose imitation gruffness never hid his extraordinary love for his family, his affection for his multitude of friends, or his profound enjoyment of the life he and Barbara had made together, first in Brookline and then in Magnolia.
In addition to his wife, children, and grandchildren, Mike is survived by his older brother, Jeff Markell, and sister-in-law, Sandy Hayes; son-in-law, Geoffrey Parkhurst, and daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Abrams; and his far-flung network of cousins and friends. Please join us for an informal gathering of family and friends celebrating Mike’s life on Saturday, August 1, 12-2 PM, at Ithaki Restaurant, 25 Hammatt St., Ipswich, MA 01938 (http://ithakicuisine.com/). Ties and jackets discouraged—Mike thoroughly disliked them. Donations in Mike’s memory may be made to support Dr. Steven Greenberg’s cerebral amyloid angiopathy (C.A.A.) research, for which Mike was a study participant fondly remembered by the researchers and staff. Checks may be made out to “Massachusetts General Hospital” and sent to MGH Hemorrhagic Stroke Research Center175 Cambridge St., Suite 300 Boston, MA 02114. or may be made online at http://www.angiopathy.org/support.html.