Marjorie Maxwell retired in her early 70s—for about 15 minutes. "I couldn’t just sit around my apartment," she said. An Asheville native, born on McDowell Street in 1926, Maxwell was one of the first female waitresses at the former S&W Cafeteria in downtown Asheville. After many years, she moved to Bailey’s Restaurant in Westgate Shopping Center. She claims to have loved the food business. "You learn how to deal with people—how to say good morning in a way that makes people feel good," she said.

In the evenings, Maxwell sang in small jazz clubs, including the former Club 54 on Lexington Avenue, and at Casa Loma, located over Pack Place. She also gave dance lessons at Dolls: the Hidden Paradise, a black nightclub above what is now Martin Luther King Drive in Asheville. Accompanied by her then-husband, guitarist Johnny Moon, Maxwell toured the East Coast and Canada and said she enjoyed the costumes, makeup and meeting the likes of Ella Fitzgerald.

When the food and music businesses became too physically demanding, Maxwell sold Stanley cleaning products and then worked as a receptionist with the Asheville Housing Authority for 15 years. Not long after she retired, she saw a Mountain Xpress ad for literacy volunteer work and applied. Maxwell asked to work with children, though she found them intimidating. "You have no idea how scared I was," she said. "All of them were somebody’s baby." But she showed up at Asheville’s Isaac Dickson Elementary every school day for the next ten years, where she focused most on teaching kids to respect each other. When she saw that two boys at Isaac Dickson couldn’t sit by each other without fighting, she had an idea. She recruited volunteers to donate yarn and knitting needles and taught the two boys how to knit. "They were sitting side by side looking like two little angels, like a portrait," Maxwell said.

For the past 20 years, Maxwell held board positions at RiverLink, the nonprofit responsible for revitalization projects on the French Broad River. RiverLink’s executive director Karen Cragnolin says Maxwell brought a sense of fun and energy to the organization—dressing up as a "French broad" at the organization’s signature cabaret event Fall in Love with the French Broad, or helping to build the playground at the Amboy Road River Park. "She’s taught us all how to give, give, give," Cragnolin says.

This spring, Maxwell was diagnosed with cancer, which took her away from her beloved Isaac Dickson students for a few months. She returned to the school one morning in May, dressed in an elegant pantsuit, silver hair coiffed and eyes bright, taking her usual place in the main hallway to greet children and parents alike. But her cancer progressed. VERVE interviewed her in late July, and she died of cancer shortly after, just shy of 83. Alida Woods, the principal at Isaac Dickson, says Maxwell was a remarkable role model who will be sorely missed.