Marjorie Hurlbutt Cheshire

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Marjorie Hurlbutt Cheshire, wife of Joseph Blount Cheshire IV and mother of Joseph Blount Cheshire V, daughter of Guy and Lydia Hurlbutt passed away peacefully on July 5, 2016 after a lengthy battle with dementia. Born in Georgia on June 4, 1922, she was raised in Augusta, Georgia and North Augusta, South Carolina with her beloved sister, Nucia and brothers, Boris and Guy each of whom she loved until the end and always. Her upbringing was simple, pure and filled with love and grace. For many years, starting in 1921, the Hurlbutt family had a small summer cottage on the shores of Mobile Bay in the sleepy town of Point Clear, Alabama. There Marjorie and her siblings spent idyllic summers playing on the shore, swimming in the Bay and generally experiencing life by the sea in a way only young people can. Those memories were cherished by Marjorie and her family down through the years.

After high school, she attended and graduated from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, a fact that helped her later create a bond with her soon to be husband when they met and married in Nashville, Tennessee during the Second World War. Joe was stationed at Oak Ridge Research facility and Margie worked as a telephone operator. After the war, they moved back to Raleigh. Soon thereafter, they had their son, Joe V, who would be their only child. They moved to what then were the outer suburbs of Raleigh off Lake Boone Trail and Coley Forest. Life was simple then. Raleigh was a small Southern town. Joe and Marjorie had a small home and their son Joe rode his bike to school. People actually knew their neighbors who mostly were the same age, with children of their own and Coley Forest was like a big family. There were study clubs and book clubs, pot luck dinners, barefooted Indian Warriors pursued by cowboys and great hunts in the creeks for crawfish and tadpoles. Mothers called their children to dinner from the front porch creating a cacophony of sound that surrounded the neighborhood where no one locked their doors. Milk men delivered the milk and laundry hung on the line. If a family was lucky, they had one car. The Cheshire family car was a second hand 1952 Studebaker, but Big Joe rode the bus to work. Marjorie was happy. It was at this place and time that she picked up the love of gardening that her dad had taught her as a child; a devotion that was to become the love of her life. Summers were spent at the family’s small cottage in Nags Head, where a seemingly endless and ever changing number of boys would share the two bunk beds during the summer, with no air conditioning, radio, TV or anything but the ocean, books and board games. Undoubtedly, Marjorie was the most patient of women and, the greatest from scratch pancake maker who ever lived.

At the age of 12, son Joe was sent off to Massachusetts to boarding school, returning only infrequently for six and a half years. Massachusetts was at that time comparable to a foreign country and who could afford telephone calls or visits to a foreign country. Marjorie wrote Little Joe five letters a week every year he was there. It was during this time that her son began to truly understand the love and devotion that his mom had for him. Later, he would know the grief it caused her to have to miss her son’s junior high and high school years. Her life lost some of its meaning, but Marjorie was always her son’s rock, the person who let him know he was loved, who taught him that grace, kindness, love and caring for others were always more important than caring for self. When others were disappointed in her son, or did not believe he was measuring up to the high bar of the Cheshire family, she always believed in him. Going into his adult life, it may have been the pressure of family history that drove her son, but it was his mother’s love and belief in him that molded his life with grace and caring. And never was a greater gift given to a child or a heart more fully described.

Once Little Joe left, Marjorie turned her life towards helping others, whether through work in the church, the Junior League, where she served as President, the Fine Arts Society, as a Docent at the Governor’s mansion and other historical sites. In many other different ways, she gave back to her community unselfishly and without question. She would not want all her good works listed here, “because one does not do good works to get recognition.”

It was at this time of loss that she honed her greatest love, next to family, and that was wildflower gardening. At a time when Raleigh was growing into the city it is today, Marjorie would go ahead of the bulldozers and harvest all manner of flowers, ferns, lace and every other species of wildflower. She created one of the most spectacular wildflower gardens in Raleigh and was a recognized expert and environmentalist. It was her peace and haven from a life that was also touched by depression, anxiety and sadness. Often the recognition and love of beauty go hand and hand with a simple and kind heart afflicted with sadness and depression and she fought that war with the usual grace she brought to everything else. Probably few people knew of her pain outside her family as it was not a time where these horrible diseases were discussed or tolerated and Margie was incapable of playing the victim which made her loving heart and soul even more spectacular.

Son Joe and his wife Carolyn lived close and had two wild and free boys who were able to get the benefit of their grandmother’s beauty, love and simplicity. They always treasured their time with her and she them. But life was no longer slow and peaceful. It was full of myriad sports teams and study and trips. One can now only wish there had been more time for the boys to have truly known her heart.

As the boys grew, and Marjorie entered her sixties, the family began to see that Marjorie’s sadness was being joined by dementia. It started with forgetfulness and then repetition. Husband, Joe, began to lose his physical abilities and after the turmoil of Hurricane Fran, they moved to the Penick Village in Southern Pines. With this move, Marjorie lost her garden and with that, in many ways, the most precious part of her soul.

Over the years at Penick Village, an interesting thing developed where Marjorie provided the body and husband Joe, the mind. Together they could function, but when Joe declined and entered health care to die in 2006, she became lost. The angels at Penick would tell you that in the seventeen years they helped Marjorie, they never heard her complain or say a harsh word about anyone, mirroring the life experience of everyone who had ever met her. Not even the devil, cast in the form of a personality and mind altering disease, could turn this sweet woman’s heart from love and peace.

Perhaps it is her greatest compliment that the staff at Penick, from the administration to the angels that keep the old folks safe and clean, have asked for there to be a Memorial Service at Penick where they, the staff, can celebrate her life because Marjorie was one of the world’s kindest and most appreciative people until the end; further proof of her selfless humanity.

In the last decade or more of Marjorie and Joe’s lives, they were cared for by the family of Mamie Smith, her mother and children. They are now our family. I cannot count the number of Thanksgivings and other Holidays that mother shared with Mamie’s family and rare was a day that they were not together. As alluded to before, old age lets you know who the bad people are and who the good people are. It also introduces you to God’s angels on earth. In the Smith family and the Penick Village Community our family has been overly blessed with an abundance of angels, and we all thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

We also thank First Health of the Carolinas who at the end gave Marjorie and our family the guidance only Hospice can give to the dying and helped bring a serenity and peace to our mother’s passing. Lastly, but far from least, there should be recognition of Margie’s daughter-in-law of 47 years, Carolyn. They were best friends and fellow gardeners, and Carolyn loved her with a protective force, loyalty and friendship that was endless in its loving beauty.

The family will have a private burial at Oakwood Cemetery at the family’s gravesite. A memorial service will be held at Penick Village in Southern Pines on August 23, 2016 at 11:00 a.m.

In lieu of flowers, should you wish, we ask that you consider making a donation to the Penick Village in Southern Pines designated for the long term care facility, to First Health of the Carolinas or to any reputable research facility that deals with the horrors of dementia.

Arrangements by Brown-Wynne Funeral Home, Saint Mary's St., Raleigh.