When Marion Met Harold

After Marion Skewis graduated from Cornell University, she moved to Newark, Delaware to claim her promised job as a Dietitian at the Men’s College at the University of Delaware. In June of 1924, the Wilmington Morning News announced that Miss Marion Skewis, having previously served as assistant dietitian at the University, had completed graduate work and “concluded her studies at Cornell this spring and will take up the duties of head dietitian at Delaware College in September.” (Wilmington Morning News). The paper noted that Miss Ruth King was also appointed as the head dietitician of the Women’s College. Ruth and Marion became roommates and stayed close friends for the rest of their lives (Marion Skewis Merrick).

Ruth wasn’t the only important person Marion met in Delaware. Marion said she finally had enough time to go out more to parties and dances and concerts and all of the things she had missed out on while she had to work her way through college. For a while she dated a professor she met at University of Delaware (she never revealed his name) and they became secretly engaged to be married. Marion remembered, though, that she was never sure about this relationship and asked the professor not to announce their engagement until she was ready (Marion Skewis Merrick).

Everything changed when, on October 12, 1925, her close friends George and Louise Baker invited her to dinner to meet Louise’s cousin, Harold Ely Merrick. Louise Pomeroy Baker and George Baker were young newlyweds, both from Amherst, Massachusetts. George was on the faculty at University of Delaware. Louise’s cousin, Harold Ely Merrick, was also from Amherst and was a student at University of Pennsylvania.

After that dinner, Marion broke off her engagement to the professor. Over the next few months, Marion and Harold traveled back and forth between Delaware and the University of Pennsylvania to visit each other. Marion said that Harold was educated, polite and formal, but also kind, sensitive and had a silly sense of humor. She believed that Harold understood that she loved to teach and would want to continue teaching after she was married, unusual in that era when it was normal for women not to work after they were married. She felt she and Harold cared about the same things and believed in the same things, and that for the first time she was really in love (Marion Skewis Merrick).

The courtship was brief. In January of 1926, Harold got a job offer to be the headmaster of a small, private school (The Arden School) in Staten Island, New York. He asked Marion if she would come with him to New York to help run the school. Marion said she knew that was his way of asking her to marry him. She said yes! (Marion Skewis Merrick)

A few days after their engagement, Harold wrote her a letter that said, “I’m the happiest man in the world…I have years of happiness to which I may look forward with the finest little lady in the world.” (Harold Merrick, personal correspondence).

Harold Merrick in Merrick Family Tree, #1

Marion Skewis Merrick in Skewis Family Tree, #1

Sources:

Baker, George Louis; U.S. School Yearbooks; 1880-2012″; School Name: Amherst Regional High School; Year: 1918; Retrieved from Ancestry.com 23 Apr 2020

Merrick, Marion Elizabeth Skewis and McDermott, LeeAnne; When I Was A Little Girl; Self Published; Palo Alto, CA

Pomeroy, Louise D.; U.S School Yearbooks, 1880-2012″, School Name: Albany High School; Year: 1921; Retrieved from Ancestry.com 23 Apr 2020

W.C.D. Alumnae Receive Honors; The Morning News; Wilmington, Delaware; 12 Jun 1924; pg 4; retrieved from Newspapers.com 23 Apr 2020