S. Marguerite Weiss

S. Marguerite Weiss, age 100, passed away peacefully on February 17, 2024, at the Kensington in Falls Church, VA. Born Sabina Grzymko in Kingston, PA, on October 28, 1923, she was the eighth of nine children born to Boleslav Grzymkovski and Helena Jakubovska. As a young teen, she chose the name “Marguerite” (the French word for her favorite flower, the daisy) for her confirmation name and in high school began to use it instead of Sabina.

Marguerite’s parents were part of the great European migration of the early 1900s, and their experience informed her life-long sympathies towards those seeking a better life in the United States. Her father, born under Russian rule in Targowisko, Poland, arrived at the Port of New York in 1907 at age 26 with $13 to his name; he never saw his parents or siblings again. His first job was as a “sand hog” digging subway tunnels under New York City. During the first World War, he worked as a machinist in a firearms company in Connecticut. Later, he drove a butcher wagon and worked in a paper mill and then moved his family to Pennsylvania, where he worked first in the soft coal mines of Cannonsburg and then in the anthracite mines in Kingston. Marguerite’s mother, also born in Poland under Russian rule, came to the U.S. with her sisters. After Helena married Boleslav, she raised their nine children on a very limited income, always practicing thrift and making do. They lost their first-born son, Jozef, who died of scarlet fever in 1913, and their first-born daughter, Stasia, who was struck and killed by an ambulance during the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918.

The year after Marguerite was born, her parents rented a store front in Kingston, PA, with an attached home for their family, and they opened a meat and grocery store there. Helena continued running the store with the help of her children after Boleslav died, when Marguerite was 10.

Marguerite grew up with her five surviving sisters and one brother in Kingston in a neighborhood melting pot of Poles, Russians, Lithuanians, Irish, Welsh, and Slovaks. The family spoke Polish at home and changed their name from Grzymkovski to Grzymko to Grymko. A self-described tomboy, Marguerite loved swimming, skating, basketball, and dancing. She also was intensely curious and had a keen intellect, and she was an excellent student. In 1941, as the second World War raged in Europe, she entered an American Legion essay contest on “How to Combat the Fifth Column in the United States” and won a 4-year college scholarship. The only one of her siblings to attend college, she began her studies in medical technology at Temple University; but after two years she entered Hamilton Standard Propellers’ scholarship program for women. Through this all-expenses-paid program, she participated in the War effort by studying at Penn State and applying these skills working in Hamilton Standard’s chemistry and metallurgy department in Hartford, CT. She loved this time with the “Hamilton Girls” and remained in touch with some of them for more than 60 years.

When the war ended, she finished her bachelor’s degree at Penn State and stayed on to earn a master’s degree in metallurgy, the only woman in her class and the first to graduate from that department, in 1949, with a thesis entitled, “Transformations in the Beta Eutectoid Alloys of the Copper-Aluminum System.” She then took a job as a research metallurgist at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, OH, where again she was one of the only women.

While working in the Constant Temperature Room in a lab at Battelle, she met the love of her life, Edwin M. Weiss, who had returned from the war in the South Pacific to finish his undergraduate degree at Ohio State. Ed and Marguerite wed on September 9, 1950, and were married for 70 years until his death in December 2020. Ed, who when he met Marguerite put aside his dreams of studying literature at the Sorbonne, once said he found poetry in his marriage to her instead. They started their married life in Madison, WI, where Ed earned a master’s degree in economic geology and Marguerite worked in cancer research at the McArdle Research Institute.

Their early married years took them from Madison to Manhattan to Dunellen, NJ, to Long Island, and then to the Washington, DC, area, where Ed attended law school and began a career as an attorney at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In Vienna, VA, where they lived for 45 years, Marguerite raised their four children and was active in the PTA, the League of Women Voters, Our Lady of Good Council Church, and her beloved Stonewall Manor Garden Club. She and Ed were devotees of the Catholic Cursillo movement and worked with their local Cursillo group for over 20 years on community outreach projects such as a prison ministry, helping to find housing and services for Vietnamese refugees, and founding the first hospice in Northern Virginia.

In her later years, Marguerite devoted her time to her extended family. She spent hours researching her Polish family tree, planned numerous family reunions, hosted family dinners and holidays, and let her grandchildren conduct science projects in her kitchen. She loved meeting her sisters for weekends in Atlantic City. She remained close with her siblings, all of whom predeceased her: Charles Grymko, Lucy Beneski, Helen Elko, Sophie Becker, Anne Segda, and Stella Drozda.

Marguerite loved meeting new people and was a terrific conversationalist, with a great sense of humor and a wonderful laugh that filled the room. She enjoyed traveling and was always eager to try new things. Her lifelong motto was “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” She believed strongly in many hands making light work, and she often marshalled those around her to tackle various projects. She loved spending time at the Delaware cottage that Ed built with his own hands, where she ably directed Ed’s efforts and could be spotted floating beyond the waves off Bethany Beach, wearing her daisy swim cap. She loved to read and sometimes stayed up all night with a good book. She enjoyed tending to her yard, and her arrival at friends’ doors with a bunch of pussy willow branches was a harbinger of spring each year. Ever a child of the Depression, she loved a good bargain. A lifelong learner with interests ranging from science to politics to literature to sports, she read the newspaper cover to cover and did the crossword each day for as long as she was able. Even as she approached her 100th birthday, she was interested in hearing about her grandchildren’s studies in materials science and philosophy.

She is survived by her children Thomas M. Weiss of Franklin, TN, Mary E. Bacon of Norfolk, VA, John A. Weiss of Fallbrook, CA, and Paul C. Weiss of Arlington, VA; daughters-in-law Kathryn Beck Weiss, Maya Grace Weiss, and Dana K. Kelley; grandchildren Christopher L. Bacon, Bryan T. Bacon, Marc H. Bacon, Michael C. Weiss, Hanna M. Weiss, Sarah K. Weiss, Henry K. Weiss, Sophie A. Weiss, and Emmett K. Weiss; and many nieces and nephews.

A celebration of Marguerite’s life will be held on Friday, February 23, 2024, at Murphy Funeral Home, 1102 West Broad Street, Falls Church. A memorial service will begin at 3PM, followed by a reception. Inurnment by Ed’s side at Arlington National Cemetery will be private.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Marguerite’s memory may be made to Global Refuge at https://www.globalrefuge.org/get-involved/ways-to-give/ or to Culpepper Garden at https://culpeppergarden.org/donate/donate-online/.