Quick Take
Marjorie Albright passed away Jan. 28 at age 108. The painter, golfer, bridge player and devoted community volunteer is remembered as being curious, resourceful and joyful. She studied astronomy at Wellesley, worked as a human computer during World War II and moved to Aptos in 1990.
Marjorie Albright was known for her thoroughness as a volunteer docent at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History and for her artistic talent as a self-trained painter in pastels and oil. But earlier in her 108 years of life, she spent days solving mathematical equations.
The Wellesley College graduate had been a “human computer” during World War II, first working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then at UC Berkeley.
She moved to the Santa Cruz area in 1990. Here, Albright golfed at DeLaveaga Golf Course, played bridge at the Santa Cruz Bridge Center and helped establish a community garden at Christ Lutheran Church in Aptos.
“She just stayed curious with art, with the news, with our lives,” said Albright’s granddaughter Alexis Meschi. “She had four sons, 10 grandchildren, 21 great grandchildren, and she was a true matriarch. She was still having us over to her house regularly. She delighted in the world around her.”
Marjorie Jane Willits Albright died Jan. 28 at the age of 108.
“She lived a great life,” Meschi, 46, told Lookout.
“Threads of impact”
Albright was born in 1918 in Reading, Pennsylvania. She was an only child, and her father was a dentist.
“She lived through the Great Depression and World War II before she was 30,” Meschi said. “Hardship was something that she was not afraid of by any means.”
Albright attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts, a private women’s liberal arts school, where she earned a bachelor’s degree and, in 1942, a master’s degree in astronomy, at a time when it was rare for women to pursue advanced degrees in the sciences.
“She was so passionate about education and women’s colleges,” Meschi said.
After graduation, Albright took a job at MIT doing research on plating selenium and how it could be used in radio tubes, according to a memoir she wrote for her family 25 years ago, which focused on her experiences and those of her ex-husband, Robert, during World War II.
“There were many such jobs available at MIT at that time because these were all jobs paid for by the U.S. government to help the war effort,” she wrote. “It was at MIT at this time that radar was discovered.”
Albright met Robert, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, at a mixer event with Wellesley, their granddaughter said. They married in 1943. Robert was a physician in the Navy and served as a lieutenant on a destroyer in the Pacific Ocean.
In 1944, after Robert Albright was assigned to the USS Monitor, Marjorie took a job as a quality control engineer for National Union Radio Co. in Pennsylvania, which was making radio tubes for the government’s war effort.
“It was really an interesting job,” she wrote in her memoir.
When Robert’s ship was ordered to San Francisco, Albright moved to California and started work in the statistics laboratory at UC Berkeley. There, she performed manual calculations to assess bombing damage to the Axis powers.
“In the Statistics Lab we had people from all over the country working, several who were professors at other colleges but wanted to help the war effort for the summer,” she wrote. “We had huge equations given to us to work on, usually it took days to solve.
“When I think of the big old electric calculators we had to work on (which were the best of the day), how all of you would laugh today. They were the size of the old cash registers that stores had.”
After the war, the two first moved to Cleveland before settling in Long Beach. They had four sons: Robin, Ronald, Randall and Ripley. In Long Beach, Albright was active in her church and the Junior League and was a docent at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
In 1990, after the couple divorced, Albright moved north to Aptos to be closer to two of her sons and their families. She did not remarry.
Meschi said she visited Wellesley with her grandma three years ago, where Albright talked with current astronomy students.
“To see her pride and to think about the impact she made was really, really powerful,” her granddaughter said. “I feel like if you’re somebody of character and value, you lay threads of impact. And she did.”
Wellesley Magazine posted on social media about Albright’s 2023 visit after hearing about her death.
“A beacon of joy”
Marla Novo, deputy director at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, said she knew Albright during the time she was a docent at the museum, from about 1993 to 2013.
“She was one of our most curious and engaging docents,” Novo wrote in an email to Lookout. “She loved leading school tours of exhibitions at the MAH. And she took her job seriously! Marjorie would walk through an exhibition, jotting down facts and impressions before leading a tour the next day or week. She came prepared!
“Marjorie was inspiring and sparked enthusiasm among students and the MAH staff.”
On Tuesday nights, Albright drove her little blue Lexus sports car to the Santa Cruz Bridge Center, where a newspaper clipping of her obituary now hangs in the club’s kitchen.
“She loved playing bridge,” instructor Bette Harken told Lookout. “And she was a very friendly person, but when she sat down at that table, she was all bridge.”
Harken said she thinks playing the card game helped Albright stay young.
“I think her mind kept working on that,” she said. “Marjorie’s mind was good till the end, and I think bridge does a lot for that.”
Harken recalled a night a few years ago that Albright’s car wouldn’t start after an evening of cards.
“My husband helped her get her car started,” she said, and the couple followed Albright home to make sure she made it safely. “And the next day at our doorstep was a big bouquet of flowers saying, ‘Thank you from Marjorie.’
“She was just a dear soul,” Harken said.
Pastor Jonas Ellison at Christ Lutheran Church described Albright, whom he recalled smiling in the front row of the church, as a “beacon of joy.” Ellison, who joined the church three years ago, said Albright made him feel comfortable in his first job as a pastor.
In addition to the community garden, Albright helped create a prayer garden and columbarium at the church, which provides a resting place for the ashes of people who have been a part of the congregation.
Lois DeVogelaere, who met Albright at the church in the 1990s and was part of a study group Albright led, called her a role model for younger women.
She recalled Albright visiting other columbaria for research and pitching the idea to the church. It was built in 1998.
“She did put a lot of time and energy into that,” DeVogelaere said.
“It has become more than just an internment site. It’s definitely a garden where people use it for services and visiting and reflection and meditation.”
Albright specifically wanted a white climbing rose on the cross that’s in the garden. Last year the rose bloomed beautifully all summer.
“I think that really tickled her to have that,” Lois said.
Albright’s ashes will be interred there, her granddaughter said.
“She’s my beacon”
Albright taught her granddaughter everything from skin care to forgiveness.
“She’s my beacon for most of the really important lessons I’ve learned in life,” Meschi said.
She said she thinks her grandmother’s experiences during the Great Depression and World War II made her resourceful. Albright refinished furniture, sewed curtains, made needlepoint piano bench covers and knit clothes for herself. She taught Meschi how to sew, and the granddaughter ran a sewing design business for women’s clothing for some time.
“We all felt like she really cared about us and was interested,” Meschi said. “She wasn’t the type of grandma that was like, you know, come sit in my lap … that’s not who she was. She was like, ‘What are you doing in your life? Do you want to go on this adventure?’ I mean, really inquisitive.”
Meshi said her grandmother drove to Los Angeles to see new museum exhibits.
“You should see the maps she has in her car,” she said. “She loved to follow a map. She’s very active and involved in her life.”
Albright read the Harvard Health newsletter to stay up to date on health science and made life changes in accordance with it. She exercised every morning, ate two poached eggs with spinach and swore by eating two vegetables with dinner every evening. She also did brain exercises, like Sudoku.
Meschi described her grandmother as authentically joyful, as someone who would “just move forward, but don’t let it harden you.”
“She did not waste a moment or a day.”
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