Sherwood Merchant Jr. was a “people person.” He made it a point to keep in contact with friends and acquaintances, leafing through his address book to look up their phone numbers and calling them regularly. He was well known for sitting at his manual typewriter and writing notes to family and friends on three-by-five-inch index cards he always had close at hand.
“My father loved to talk to people, and he kept in touch with them the old-fashioned way by calling or writing them,” said his daughter Melissa Merchant of Atlanta. “He always knew what was going on with his friends, whether they had been sick or needed something or how their families were doing. And he wrote many, many notes over the years to people on index cards, even to my mother. He was famous for that among all who knew him. When he was in hospice care, members of his church typed cards for him.”
Sherwood A. Merchant Jr., 94, died on Oct. 18. He was born Nov. 3, 1921, in Oxford, Fla., to Sherwood Merchant Sr. and Vesta Merchant. His family said he was “almost” an Atlanta native, having moved to Atlanta in 1929. He attended Crew Street Elementary School, Hoke Smith Jr. High School and Commercial High School, where he graduated in 1940.
His first job out of high school was assistant manager of the Euclid Theatre in Little Five Points, working 55 hours a week for $15. He soon found a job paying $18 for 40 hours at Draper Corporation, then the world’s largest maker of looms for cotton mills. He was a World War II veteran, serving in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1946 with General George Patton’s Third Army.
Merchant served in many civic and charitable organizations. He held a variety of offices with the Capitol Area Kiwanis over 40 years, including lieutenant governor of the Georgia 16th Division. He received the Kiwanis’ Hixson Award in 1999 for his longtime support. He was a member of the Administrative Management Society for over 30 years, serving in many leadership roles including president of the Atlanta chapter and international director. Merchant was also president of the Commercial High Alumni Association and a member of the Atlanta chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society. He was a member of Union United Methodist Church in Stockbridge and taught Sunday school there for over 60 years.
Merchant was a leader in the Salvation Army for over 45 years, a founding member of the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center Advisory Council and its chairman for several years. The organization held a special place in Merchant’s heart, said Peggy Merchant, his wife of 62 years.
“His father was a teacher in Florida, and in 1929 at the beginning of the Depression, schools there apparently ran out of money and closed,” she said. “A friend told him that he could have a job in a grocery store in Atlanta if he could get there. The Salvation Army helped the family get to Atlanta, and my husband never forgot that. He rang bells for the Salvation Army every Christmas, helped get donations for the Salvation Army store, always anything he could do to help the organization. And he never missed a monthly advisory council meeting.”
Major Steve Justice of the Salvation Army in Atlanta said Merchant’s chair at advisory council meetings will be left vacant for the next year and Merchant’s picture will hang in the boardroom. “We are proud to honor him for his leadership, his extraordinary service and all he did for the Salvation Army over many years,” Justice said.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Merchant is survived by two sons, Mark, of Snellville, and Matthew, of Marietta; and three grandchildren.
A Celebration of Life was held Sunday, Oct. 30 at Union United Methodist Church. The family requests that donations be made to the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center or Union United Methodist Church.
