Charlotte MacDermott

April 24, 1924 – October 24, 2019

Mother, teacher, sailor, and pilot Charlotte MacDermott died on October 24, 2019, following complications from Alzheimer’s Disease. Her death came in her residence at John Knox Village, a retirement community in Pompano Beach, Florida. She was 95½ years old.

Mrs. MacDermott was born on April 24, 1924, to Dr. Lloyd Ackerman and Charlotte Nelson Ackerman in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father was teaching and finishing his doctoral degree. The family moved to Cleveland Heights in 1925 when her father started work as a member of the biology faculty at Western Reserve University. She attended the Cleveland Heights Schools, graduating from the high school in 1942, during World War II. She enrolled in Flora Stone Mather College at Western Reserve University the same month. She left college the following year when she married her first husband, Gerald H. Strate.

In the early years of their married life, she and her husband lived in an apartment near the WRU campus in University Circle, moving to Warrensville Heights after he graduated from medical school. A decade or so later they moved to a new home in Shaker Heights that she helped design. They had four children: three daughters and one son. She was active in the community, particularly in the effort to build a swimming pool in Warrensville Heights, serving as head of the Build a Pool Association. She earned a private pilot’s license, proudly giving rides in a Cessna plane to friends and family. When her marriage ended in 1970, she returned to school to complete her undergraduate degree in education at Ursuline College and began work as an elementary school teacher at Saint Henry’s School in Cleveland.

In 1973 she married J. Christopher MacDermott, MD, a widower with four children of his own. He was an avid sailor, and she took to sailing immediately. In preparation for retirement living on the water, they studied celestial navigation together – she was the first woman to be a member of the Cleveland Power Squadron. They set off from Cleveland for the Bahamas in 1983 in a 39-foot sailboat they had specially outfitted, sailing along the Erie Canal and down the Intracoastal Waterway. As her husband’s health declined, they spent most of their retirement cruising the Bahamas together in their boat, which he christened “Chere Amie” (“dear friend” in French) in tribute to her. They eventually settled in Lighthouse Point, Florida, where Dr. MacDermott died in 1993.

After his death she continued to travel worldwide, including several boat trips back to the Bahamas to see her many friends there. She also regularly traveled north to see her family in Ohio – but only in the warmest part of the summer. In 2009, as her own health declined, she moved to John Knox Village.

Mrs. MacDermott is survived by her four children, including Donna (Richard) Baznik, Cathy (William) Hart, Susan (Donald) Groszek, and Michael (Amber) MacDermott, three stepchildren, including John (Joyce) MacDermott, William (Susan) MacDermott, and Sally (Bill) Green, 17 grandchildren, and numerous great-grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. She was predeceased by her parents, her husbands, her brother Lloyd Ackerman, and a stepson, James Christopher MacDermott, III.

Services are private. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions in memory of Mrs. MacDermott to the Alzheimer’s Association or another charity of the donor’s choice.