Marjorie Winafred Lord: A beloved teacher and FBI translator during WWII

This story is part of an ongoing Miami Herald series chronicling the lives of South Florida COVID-19 victims.

Marjorie Winafred Lord had a long and eventful life — she was a beloved teacher, generous friend, caring wife and mother, and even an FBI translator during wartime, said her friends and family.

She died April 4 after contracting COVID-19 at age 97.

She was the first of four children born to George and Marguerite Skelly on July 6, 1922, in La Romana, Dominican Republic. In 1927, the family moved to Banes, Cuba, where her father worked as superintendent of railroads for the United Fruit Company. Marjorie was sent to the United States as a teenager to study at The Academy of Sacred Heart in New Orleans. After graduating, she returned to Cuba to attend Havana University and then traveled back to the United States to study at New York University.

During World War II, she worked for the FBI in New York City and Washington, D.C., as a Spanish-English translator. After the war, she returned to Banes to teach elementary school. She taught every subject to children and also taught English to locals.

“She loved children,” said her daughter, Maureen Lord. “She still had old students call her up, even as recently as maybe a month or two before she died, to talk to her, so they had good memories of her.”

In Banes, she met John Frederick Lord, who was the agricultural superintendent of sugarcane operations at the United Fruit Company. They married in 1952 and had two daughters, Maureen and Martha, and two sons, John and Peter. When their second child was still a toddler, the family moved to Fort Lauderdale to escape the revolution in Cuba.

She was described by her family as very engaged in current events, and she had always remained interested in Cuba. John Lord said his mother would always try to provide as much financial support as she could to families on the island.

“She wasn’t incredibly wealthy or anything like that ... but she was trying to keep up and help people who were still in Cuba,” he said.

According to Maureen Lord, she enjoyed genealogy and had traced the family’s roots. She liked providing materials she put together about their genealogy to relatives.

Martha Lord added, “My mother created handwritten family trees for each of us and organized the family photographs. We each have that family history now thanks to her efforts.”

She loved taking care of kids, and would always make time to spend with her family. “She had seven grandchildren,” John Lord said. “She just really enjoyed having time with all of them.”

Maureen Lord remembered her mother as being a very amicable person.

“She maintained a very large circle of friends,” she said. “She was someone who would talk to anybody. If she was out, she would strike up conversations with people.”

Lord spent the last few years of her life at a nursing home after suffering a stroke.

“There have been a huge number of people in nursing homes who have died from COVID-19,” John Lord said. “She was elderly, but she’d been in a nursing home and she was generally fine. Then suddenly she caught COVID-19 from somebody in the nursing home and died.”

He said he was disappointed with officials’ response to the coronavirus crisis, explaining he felt the virus had been downplayed. Deaths could have been prevented, he said. “I’m sure there are tens of thousands of people in nursing homes in similar situations,” he added. “A lot of people could have otherwise stayed alive and lived longer, but they died. A lot of people in the government wanted to hide the serious situation in the U.S.”

The pandemic prevented Marjorie Lord’s children from visiting their mom during her final days. “It’s still hard to deal with the fact that we couldn’t be with her at the end,” Martha said. “And we haven’t been able to have a service because friends and family can’t travel or be together now. She was 97; she had a good, long life. It’s sad that it ended this way.”

Lord lived with her daughter for 25 years. Sometimes Maureen sees things that remind her of her mother and still thinks, “Mom will be interested in that, I’ve got to tell her about it.”

Lord was preceded in death by her parents George and Marguerite; her three younger brothers, Jack, Richard and George Jr.; and her husband, John. She is survived by her four children, Martha, Maureen, John and Peter; her grandchildren Elizabeth, John III, James, Sophia, Alice, Kathleen and Sarah; and her great-grandchildren, Langston and Ara Lord, as well as 13 nieces and nephews.

Beatriz De La Portilla, a Florida International University journalism student, wrote this story for the Miami Herald.