Marion Robertson Demberg

She is survived by her three children; her son, Dr. James Harold Demberg of Corpus Christi, Texas, her daughters, Marion Taylor Drew, Esq. of Austin, Texas and Sally Elizabeth Robinett of Warren, Texas and Estes Park, Colorado. Her husband, Harold Theodore Demberg, brothers, Archibald and James Robertson, and sister, Helen Carnegie, all pre-deceased her.

Mrs. Demberg was born June 30, 1915 in a home on West 153 Street in Manhattan, New York. She was the fourth and youngest child of Marion Taylor Henderson of Leith, Scotland and James Murray Robertson of Ayr, Scotland. The family moved to Jersey City, New Jersey in 1918, to a brownstone on Whitman Avenue. Hers was a childhood of gaslights and horse-drawn carts, a coming of age in the Great Depression, rationing and tribulation as a young bride during the Second World War, and raising a family in the subsequent turmoil of the Cold War.

Her first job, in the very depths of the depression, was at Macy’s Department Store at Herald Square in New York City at age 14, when she left school to help support her family. Her father, despite being a master plumber who worked on the magnificent Manhattan skyscrapers of the day, was often without work at that time. At age 16, she joined the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in an actuarial function.

On November 10, 1938, she married Harold Demberg in the front parlor of her parents’ home. After living a short time in an apartment on Glendale Avenue on Staten Island, New York, Marion and Harold purchased their own home on Lindbergh Avenue there. During 1943 – 1945, he served in the Pacific Theater with the Construction Battalion (Seabees); she worked in the local ship yard’s time office on Staten Island.

While raising her three children, she sometimes supplemented their income by working at local retail stores and in childcare, so the family could spend part of some summers in Harvey Cedars on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Though she was never to realize her dream of becoming a school teacher, she taught Sunday School and was active as a deacon and in other ways for many years in the Oakwood Heights Community Church (Congregational) on Staten Island.

Mr. Demberg retired from Consolidated Edison in 1974, after more than 46 years of service, and they moved to a house on a spring-fed lake in Seminole, Florida, near the Gulf. In 1991, Marion and Harold relocated to Austin, Texas to be near family. Mr. Demberg died in 1994. Mrs. Demberg continued to live independently until age 88, still driving, shopping, cooking and gardening. She was devoted to her two grandchildren, James Francis Drew and Jessica Taylor Drew, tutoring them in math and penmanship, encouraging their music practice, and even ferrying them to appointments after the death of their father in 1999.

In 1997, Mrs. Demberg journeyed to the homeland of her parents, spending two weeks touring Scotland, from the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh to the farms of Ayr, the mountains of Skye, the towns of Portree and Tobermory, and the holy isle of Iona. A month before her 82nd birthday, she proudly climbed to the top of Edinburgh Castle, strolled the Threave Gardens, and explored the abbey ruins of Melrose and Jedborough.

Beginning in 2003, as medical conditions warranted, she resided in assisted living facilities in Tyler, San Marcos, and Bastrop, Texas.

Marion Demberg was a person of great strength and fortitude, bearing adversity gracefully and always keeping her promises. She was as demanding of herself as she was of others, and could always be counted on. She will be missed.

She will be cremated, in accordance with her wishes; a subsequent memorial service will be private.