Obituary

FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Marjorie Edwards Ewing passed away at her home in Fairhope on Feb. 6 at the age of 92. Born on or about Nov. 9, 1918 and abandoned on the steps of an orphanage in Hinsdale, Ill., her life spanned many cataclysmic historical years. Thanks to a remarkable confluence of events, she was often caught up in the turbulence.

Marjorie’s parents were Willard (“Bill”) and Helen Edwards, a well-to-do couple who adopted her at age 2. When Marjorie was 4 years old, the family moved to a large property on Fairhope Avenue. Willard Edwards, a history and geography teacher, who was hired by Marietta Johnson to teach at the Organic School, was an idealist who was attracted by Fairhope’s utopian principles. Helen Edwards, a naturalist who also taught at the school, turned the family home into a zoo and an aviary. Marjorie remembered her mother occasionally carrying small snakes or even a baby alligator in her apron pocket.

The Edwards family car, a 1924 Ford station wagon with yellow curtains and lacquered wooden sides, was often seen on the streets of Fairhope, sometimes with Helen’s specimens — such as an alligator that had washed up on the beach — in the back. Bill Edwards spent some of his time at the Organic School building a large sailboat called the Osprey. When it was launched, the entire side of the school building had to be removed so that the student body could escort it, with much fanfare, down Fairhope Avenue to the bay. Marjorie often spoke of the 1926 hurricane, when her family sailed up the Mobile River on the Osprey to escape the storm.

When Marjorie was 16, Willard Edwards decided to relocate his family to Russia. The year was 1934, and Edwards was disillusioned with life in the U.S. His portfolio had been affected by the Great Depression, and he wanted to participate in the great Socialist experiment in the Soviet Union. His timing could not have been worse; Stalin’s reign of terror was just beginning. Marjorie and her family had the ultimate culture shock when they moved from the beautiful natural setting of their home in Fairhope to a single, frigid 12-by-16-foot room in a dreary Soviet bloc.

After only a year, Marjorie and her mother and brothers were left to fend for themselves in Moscow. Willard had learned there was no place for him in the Soviet educational system. Disillusioned, he decided to return to the U.S. — but not before persuading his eldest son, Dan, to become a Soviet citizen. Helen initially refused to follow her husband because Dan, who no longer had a U.S. passport, would be considered a traitor if he tried to leave. But as time went on and their friends began to disappear, Marjorie convinced her mother that she and her other two children had no choice but to leave.

Then began Marjorie’s great adventure. Helen and her younger son were allowed to leave, but Marjorie, by then a lovely young woman of 19, was terrorized into applying for Soviet citizenship. She was forced to remain behind with her brother, Dan, but when Russia entered World War II and the Germans began to bomb Moscow, she managed to attach herself to the U.S. embassy staff and was evacuated with them to a distant city.

On New Year’s Eve of 1941, Marjorie got a seat on a DC-3 plane to Teheran. In an odyssey that lasted many months, she traveled with convoys of army trucks and trains packed with troops and evacuees to Basra. Often she was the only female for miles around, which may sometimes have been exhilarating, but was for the most part an extremely frightening experience for a young woman. She reached Bombay on a ship carrying British troops, and in Karachi, she finally boarded a ship carrying American refugees back to the U.S. Zigzagging across the ocean to avoid German U-boats, the ship finally reached New York in 1942.

Marjorie’s adventures continued after her return to the U.S., thanks to her husband. She married Gordon Ewing, a member of the U.S. diplomatic corps. After their marriage, the couple moved to Berlin, where Ewing was the Political Chief and Director of the American radio station RIAS (“the free voice of the free world”) from 1949-1957. Under Ewing’s direction, the station kept listeners informed of what was really happening in Berlin during the turbulent years when the East Berliners were being crushed by the Soviet army.

Marjorie’s Russian years became a stumbling block to Ewing’s career when Sen. Joseph McCarthy investigated her husband for alleged Communist sympathies. Part of the reason for these allegations was that his wife had lived for a time in Moscow.

Later, the Ewings were stationed at American embassies in Vienna, Rome and Bonn. When Gordon retired, he and Marjorie moved to Fairhope, to the same property on Fairhope Avenue where her family had lived many years before.

Marjorie was predeceased by her younger brother, Bert; the Ewing’s adopted son, Peter; and her husband. She is survived by her brother, Dan (known in Russia as Kenneth Vladimirovitch), who at age 96 still lives in Zlatoust, in the Ural mountains; a nephew, Vladimir Edwards of Toronto; a niece, Elena, a pediatrician in Zlatoust; and many friends who will greatly miss her exuberant personality, fascinating stories and colorful language.