Margaret Lois Merrell Heller

Margaret Lois Merrell Heller was a wife, mother, grandmother and longtime member of her Charleston area community who died on October 1, 2026, at the age of 87. Unlike many people whose lives are documented on this site, Margaret Heller was not a public figure in the conventional sense. She left no Wikipedia page, no body of published work and no record of public office or celebrity. What is known about her comes from the obituary her family shared through the Palmetto Cremation Society in North Charleston, and it is on those terms, as a private woman remembered with evident warmth by the people closest to her, that this page is written.

Margaret was born on July 22, 1939, in Auburn, New York, to Ralph Merrell and Clarice Bonita Whitlock Merrell. She grew up in the small town of Wolcott, New York, before going on to study music at the College of Wooster in Ohio, where her major was piano. Her family's obituary describes her as coming from a well educated family and notes that music, alongside flowers, nature, her church and singing with her family, remained among her lasting passions throughout her life.

Her adult life was shaped by two marriages before she settled for good in the South Carolina Lowcountry. She was first married to Richard Davidson, with whom she had two children, Lisa Davidson Bachan and Andrew Jon Davidson. She later married Albert Joseph Martin, and though that marriage ended, she remained a mother figure to his three sons, Stan Martin, who predeceased her in 2022, Geoff Albert Martin and William Albert Martin. In 2009 she married John Graham Heller II, who survives her, and she became a stepmother to his children, Katherine LaRue Hyman and Rutledge Hyman, and sister in law to his brother, John Graham Heller III.

For decades Margaret made her home on James Island, South Carolina, just outside Charleston, with Folly Beach among her favorite places to visit. She became a grandmother to three grandchildren, Victoria Bachan Soroka, Sage Martin and Jake Martin, and her family's obituary describes a wide circle of relatives she wished to be remembered alongside. Her only brother, Wayne, predeceased her, as did his wife Monique.

Margaret Heller died on October 1, 2026, in the Charleston area after a brief illness. Her family has said the cause of death was respiratory failure. No public figures or news organizations have commented on her death, since she was not a person of public prominence, but her family announced the news through a published obituary and has arranged a memorial service for her at First Scots Presbyterian Church in historic Charleston on October 11, 2026.