Marie Duke passed peacefully on the morning of January 29th, 2026, in her beloved Silver Maples Retirement Center in Chelsea, Michigan, surrounded by her six children, Kathryn, Paul, Michele, Lynda, Lorraine, and Rick.
Marie was “Oma” to her nine grandchildren, all surviving—Jeffrey, Emma, Gina, James Paul, Christopher, Sasha, Victoria, Fareed, and Zahir, as well as two new great-grandchildren, Elise and Charlie.
Marie was born in 1934, as an only child of Marie Alice Myers (Weir) and Charles August Myers in Detroit. She grew up in Detroit until 1948, when she and her mother took a rough three-week voyage to Nuremberg on an old army “liberty ship”, where her father served as a translator for the historic trials.
She returned to Detroit, in 1950, during her junior year at Denby high school in Detroit, where she launched the “Question Mark Club” with a dozen friends and was a cheerleader. In 1952, she enrolled in Michigan State College (now MSU) with a 4-year competitive scholarship.
During her freshman year, she met Richard Duke at a church picnic as they both reached for the same mustard. He wooed her with song on a canoe ride down the Red Cedar River and they married in 1955. They were married 67 years until his passing in 2022.
As the children arrived in quick succession, Marie ran a remarkable household on a tight budget, with square meals, magical holidays, and cutout cakes for every birthday. She also made time for her Lakewood neighborhood in Ann Arbor–serving as Cub Scout Den Leader, Girl Scout “cookie chair”, hosting pinochle parties, and freely gifting zucchinis and tomatoes from her prodigious gardens.
When the household headcount dropped to four, Marie started teaching at Michigan Technical Institute and later partnered with her husband on his Multilogue role-playing games consulting business. All the while Marie volunteered generously, including for St Joseph’s Hospital, Meals on Wheels, and the Ann Arbor Hands On Museum, which became a regular favorite to visit with her grandchildren.
For the past decade, she invested in the extraordinary community at Silver Maples where she served on 6 committees, championed the recycling program, and welcomed newcomers to that wonderful community that she loved so much.
Memorial services will be held Monday, February 2nd, 11 a.m. at Silver Maples of Chelsea. She requested any donations be made to a charity of your choice in lieu of flowers. The livestream of the service will be posted at https://www.facebook.com/colefuneralchapelchelsea/live_videos/
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