Merrilee Nelson

Once upon a time she was fire chief in a little town in the mountains of Washington state; bartender at an ancient rambling inn somewhere on the outskirts of ski country; management consultant at a design firm in Hong Kong and resident there at the storied Helena May; child-cowgirl, post-hole digger, fence-mender and adventurer who got her fervent wish to raise horses, ducks, pigs, cows and other friends on her family’s ranch in Spokane; manager of a baroque orchestra in Chicago; Green Peace activist on the Great Lakes; roofer, builder and off-grid cabin dweller deep in the heart of dirt-road territory in the north Northwest; nose-to-the-grindstone laborer at Boeing to pay for half a year kicking around Mexico (pre-cartels) in a VW van; parole officer, clam-digger, commuter by ferry; gardener coaxing ferns and flowers from a previously forsaken patch of northeast Ohio dirt; maker of lifelong friends from a random assortment of neighbors. No matter how long, how run-on the sentence, it will leave out more than it manages to express and strain against the limits of the writer to convey Merrilee’s character and competencies. She was a brilliant writer of letters and discerning reader, raised on horseback and behind the wheel of manual-transmission vehicles which she operated off-road before she’d fully hit her double digits; quick to share her laugh, wit, charm, insight, a flash of anger or charisma. She was a blue eyed Viking whose original crib was an apple crate and whose early words (first delivered sternly to one who’d offered to tie her shoes) were often repeated: “Mer do it.”

Merrilee Ann Nelson was born January 25, 1944, in Henderson, Nevada, and died July 11, 2025, in northeast Ohio. Her parents, Stanley and Kathleen Hanson Nelson, and her brother, Terry Nelson, died previously. She is survived by her partner, Jenny Wilson, by her niece, nephew, and great nephew, by Jenny’s brothers and sister-in-law, nieces, nephew, great nephews and cousins, and by many loving and beloved friends.