Martina Maude Merzenich, 88, died peacefully at the Twin Oaks Specialty Care facility in Sweet Home on Jan. 6, 2009.
She was born Jan. 4, 1921 to Peter Frances and Gertrude Ione Smith of Lebanon. She attended Mount Angel Convent School in Portland and later taught primary school there until leaving the Benedictine Order and entering the U.S. Navy, where she served as a WAVE in World War II.
Following her discharge from military service, she returned to Lebanon and worked as a secretary for a logging company where she met and later married William T. Merzenich, Jr. of Lebanon. Moving to Sweet Home in 1959, the Merzenichs built the Porta Via Motel and managed it for many years, and later developed careers in real estate.
Mrs. Merzenich operated her own firm, Rockcliff Real Estate, for more than 20 years before moving on to work in the field of international student placement. With her son Harold, she founded and operated International Student Services, an Oregon-Japan based company specializing in student exchanges and summer educational tours, and traveled abroad and within the U.S. extensively for her work.
Mrs. Merzenich had a life-long interest in herbs and gardening, and during the 1950s established the Lebanon Herb Society with her mother and later the Herb Show, holding annual exhibitions and events designed to educate the public on the culinary and healing properties of locally grown plants and herbs.
She owned and operated the Sweetbrier Herb Gardens on Wheeler Street in Lebanon for many years, and was the author of several manuscripts, including “The World of Natural Colors,” a work devoted to the research and application of natural dyes, and “The World of Lavenders,” a reference guide on lavender breeding and cultivation. She also wrote her personal memoirs in 1995.
In her retirement, Mrs. Merzenich led an active life, engaging in gardening, hunting and fishing with her husband, and in quilt-making and decorating egg shells.
She is survived by four of her five children, Maurita, Germaine, Andrew, and Harold; her husband, Herman Van Daam of Sweet Home; an elder sister, Muriel Marvin of Portland, and younger sister Tony Cooksey of Palmdale, Calif.
She was preceded in death by her eldest son, Theadore, who passed away in 1969.
Mrs. Merzenich will be remembered by family and friends at a graveside ceremony to inter her ashes at Lebanon’s IOOF Cemetery on Memorial Day 2009. Anyone interested in attending this gathering to celebrate her life may contact her husband, Herman Van Daam, at 367-1328, or her son, Harold Smith at (575) 680-6413, at [email protected] or by mail at 1065 Hess Terrace, Las Cruces, NM, 88005.