Marjorie Cody’s life in New York was full of amazing experiences.
She studied piano under Sergei Rachmaninov, and she danced with Shirley Temple, for starters.
“When she lived with her parents, Rachmaninov was their upstairs neighbor in their apartment building,” said her daughter Carolyn McClatchey, who lives in Atlanta. “So she used to jokingly say she studied piano under Rachmaninov. And somehow her mother knew Shirley Temple’s mother, and I’ve got a picture of them in somebody’s backyard, dancing.”
And then there was the time a beau took her up in his open-cockpit bi-plane and they flew over the Empire State Building, while it was under construction.
“She lived the most amazing and remarkable life in New York,” McClatchey said of her mother. “But then she came to the South and just fit in perfectly. She mixed her New York moxie with Southern grace and charm.”
Marjorie Lewis Cody, of Atlanta, died Saturday, two days before her 98th birthday, after a brief period of declining health. A private burial will be held Friday and a memorial celebration is scheduled 11 a.m. Saturday at North Avenue Presbyterian Church, Atlanta. H.M. Patterson, Spring Hill, is in charge of arrangements.
Cody lived in New York until 1942, when she married Atlanta attorney Welborn Cody. Before that, she had traveled extensively with her father, who was the assistant general manager and served as treasurer for the Metropolitan Opera for 42 years. After high school she attended and graduated from the Katharine Gibbs School, a secretarial academy. She spoke fluent French, Italian and German, which she used often in her work for a French conductor and an Italian singer.
It was during a trip to Atlanta in 1940 that she met the man who would become her husband. Two years later, the couple married in Los Angeles and she moved to Atlanta, where he’d already established his law practice. Welborn Cody died suddenly in 1976, and though she was broken- hearted, she managed to continue many of the activities they once enjoyed together, their daughter said.
Once in Atlanta, Marjorie Cody spent much of World War II as a translator. She typed case histories and letters for wounded soldiers at Lawson General Hospital, which was near the Naval Air Station in Atlanta. She also became heavily involved in the work of her church, North Avenue Presbyterian.
“When she spoke, everyone listened,” said friend and fellow church member John Wieland. “She was fiercely independent, and she had a sense of what was right. You put those two things together, and you get something wonderful. That combination created this wonderful, unique woman who everyone respected.”
In addition to her daughter, survivors include two grandsons; one granddaughter; and seven great-grandchildren.
About the Author
