Marjorie Joyce Green Winkler, 84, of Wellfleet, died peacefully on July 23rd at Pleasant Bay Nursing Center in Brewster, surrounded by her children and grandchildren.
She was born December 5,1934 in Brooklyn, New York to the late Bertha Toibe Granat (Brown) and Frederick Lewis Green. Her father was killed in an automobile accident, when Marjorie was six months old. She grew up in a Brooklyn household with her mother, aunt, uncle and grandmother, playing stick ball with her friends. Their house had a postage stamp back yard, in which her mother planted every kind of flower, and prolific peach and cherry trees. The family would fish at Rockaway Beach, clean fish, can peaches, and make noodles for Sabbath dinner.
Her neighbors would have hootenannies at their house with musicians like Pete Seeger. From them Marjorie gained a life-long love of folk music. She played the piano and thought that she might want to do it professionally. She was accepted into the Julliard School. She was a life-long aficionado of all kinds of music, from cello concertos to Janis Joplin. When she was little, an Uncle gave her a working microscope. She spent hours huddled over it, magnifying everything she could find.
Marjorie went to grade school with the same group from kindergarten to eighth grade, making life-long friends. In eighth grade, as a result of an IQ test, she was placed in a high school program for gifted and talented youth. She was a confident leader in high school, and was voted “most popular.”
She planned to attend the free City College. Her mother thought it would be important for her to leave home and secretly filled out an application for Cornell University for her. She was accepted with a partial scholarship, which meant she had to work her way through college (which few people did then). Looking back, she would say it was the best thing her mother ever did for her. Leaving home gave her a new perspective. She believed that anyone could be anything they put their mind to; so, the inequality she observed as one of a few working-class students at an Ivy-league school shocked her. She had to dig deep to find the confidence she had in high school. She found it in the study of science, in her love of music, and in a young man who was so smitten the first time he saw her that he dropped his ice cream cone.
She and Stefan met in Cornell’s classical music listening room. Their courtship was swift. Though Marjorie’s family always said they wanted her to marry a good Jewish boy — a lawyer or doctor — when she came home with a good Jewish boy headed to medical school — they were opposed to the relationship. Stefan’s mother was equally unsupportive, so the couple eloped. The Rabbi at Cornell married them, and the Rabbi’s wife made brownies. Stefan’s mom tried to have the wedding annulled, but eventually, the families came to love their child’s spouse.
The young couple moved to Buffalo where Stefan began medical school. Marjorie began graduate school at Buffalo, mapping the atrial/ventricular node. They moved to Boston where she worked in a neurology lab at Harvard. Following Stefan’s school needs, they kept moving, to the Bronx and back to Boston.
From 1958 to 1966 they had four children. When the youngest was born, they packed up their station wagon and headed south, to Durham, North Carolina, where Stefan had his residency. They entered the state the same month as an army of Ku Klux Klan members were converging on the state for a national convention. Marjorie tried to hide they horror she felt when they passed the billboard that read “Welcome to Klan Country.” The family were unable to find housing, since no white landlord wanted to rent to a Yankee family, especially a Jewish one. The assumption was that anyone fitting that demographic was probably a civil rights activist. They finally were able to rent a house from a Jewish family.
The family moved to Wisconsin in 1969, when Stefan was offered a position at the VA Hospital. Madison was transformative for Marjorie. She began volunteering at the Arboretum, and fell in love with the prairie. She began taking graduate classes and going on field trips with hippy college kids. She stopped wearing dresses and heels and make-up, encouraged by the feminist movement. When they bought a house, she began growing a prairie where a lawn used to be. When her children, Anne and Michael were at City School, she was a science teacher, and a mentor to many. In 1975, when her oldest left for college, she enrolled in graduate school full time.
She earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin. She studied paleoclimatology with a focus on the post-glacial period. Study sites included Wisconsin, Florida, and the glacial ponds at Cape Cod National Seashore. Once again, she was spending her time huddled over a microscope, this time counting pollen. The modeling that she did of past climate change helped develop our understanding of the climate crisis we face today. Her study of Walden Pond was featured on the front page of the New York Times, Science Times section.
Her grandchildren were her joy. She wanted to know what they were excited about in each stage of their lives, and would listen to them intently.
Stefan died in 2000. Marjorie continued to live in Wisconsin until 2009, when she moved to Cape Cod to be close to grandchildren, living in the house her son Michael built. She found great joy in her bird feeders. She made friends with many in Wellfleet. Neighbor dogs, Clover and Manny, visited daily. She spent her last year in Pleasant Bay Nursing home, where she made friends with aides, volunteers, and roommates.
Marjorie saw the whole world in a grain of sand. Her curiosity was contagious. Most importantly, she was kind.
She is survived by children, Anne Winkler-Morey (David) Michael Winkler, (Katherine Edwards Winkler) Daniel Winkler (Marietta Hitzemann) and David Winkler (Lisa Stevens) and grandchildren Emily Winkler-Morey, (Lluvia Alcázar) Nathan Winkler, Manuel Botero Zurita, Stefan Winkler, Gordon Winkler and Benjamin Winkler, along with several nieces and nephews.
Family and friends are invited to a Celebration of Marjorie's life at the Mass Audubon Bird Sanctuary, 291 US-6, South Wellfleet Mass, Saturday July 27th from 2 to 4 pm.
If desired, memorial donations in her memory may be made to, Refugee and Immigration Center of Education and Legal Services ( RAICES) 1305 North Flores St. San Antonio Texas, 78212 RAICES.org, OR to 350.org, a climate justice network.