Nanticoke resident Doris Merrill of Nanticoke holds a photograph taken on her wedding day in this 2015 file photo. Merrill, a World War II veteran, died Thursday at the age of 97.
                                 Times Leader file photo

Nanticoke resident Doris Merrill of Nanticoke holds a photograph taken on her wedding day in this 2015 file photo. Merrill, a World War II veteran, died Thursday at the age of 97.

Times Leader file photo

<p>Veterans Doris Merrill and Albert Burkevage of the Veterans Affairs make Their way down Wyoming Avenue during the 2011 Memorial Day Parade. Merrill died Thursday at the age of 97.</p>
                                 <p>Times Leader file photo</p>

Veterans Doris Merrill and Albert Burkevage of the Veterans Affairs make Their way down Wyoming Avenue during the 2011 Memorial Day Parade. Merrill died Thursday at the age of 97.

Times Leader file photo

<p>Doris Merrill and her husband Paul are seen in a photograph taken on their wedding day.</p>
                                 <p>Times Leader file photo</p>

Doris Merrill and her husband Paul are seen in a photograph taken on their wedding day.

Times Leader file photo

Doris Merrill, a well-known local woman who served her country during World War II, passed away on Thursday at the age of 97.

Merrill’s granddaughter, Heather Challenger, and the Rev. Jane O’Borski, pastor at Wyalusing United Methodist Charge, told the Times Leader of Merrill’s passing in phone interviews on Thursday evening.

“Doris was one of the most amazing persons you would ever want to meet,” O’Borski said of the woman she grew up with, as her parents were close friends of Merrill’s. “She always had a positive attitude. She had many struggles throughout her life and that never stopped her positive attitude.”

According to a previous interview with the Times Leader in 2015, Merrill began serving in the military in 1944 at the age of 20, serving as a transcriptionist for the U.S. Navy in Cape May. That’s where she met her husband, Paul Merrill, who had been serving as a Marine.

The two were wed less than a year later in early 1945, with a wedding party so large that the only vehicles that fit all 20 members were two hearses.

Merrill lived a full life, going on to receive both bachelor’s and master’s degrees, teaching for many years at Wilkes University, Penn State and Nanticoke High School.

Merrill’s granddaughter, Heather Challenger, told the Times Leader on Thursday evening that her grandmother had touched so many lives.

“She was just such a spitfire,” Challenger said. “Everywhere I went with her, we ran into someone she knew.”

Challenger added that even some of the nurses who helped take care of Merrill over the years were former students of hers.

While Merrill struggled with mobility due to multiple sclerosis, having used a wheelchair consistently since 1957, both Challenger and O’Borski said that it was impossible to dull the shine of her spirit.

O’Borski said that one of Merrill’s strongest foundations was in her faith in God. She said that once a reporter asked her why she believed so strongly, even in the face of all of her challenges.

“She said, because she places her trust in God,” O’Borski said. “She used that to encourage others.”

Challenger also said that Merrill’s unwavering positivity came from somewhere within her.

“I think it was just innate in her,” she said. “She was definitely very stubborn and headstrong. I think that’s why she lived so long.”

Merrill overcame many of the challenges placed in her path, telling a Times Leader reporter in 2015 that she was the only woman working on a project that tracked the movement of Navy ships worldwide.

“In a man’s world, they treated me with great respect,” she told us then. “And, I, in turn, did my job.”

In 1999, Merrill began competing in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games, first attending the competition held in Puerto Rico that year. She competed in numerous events, winning more than 60 medals.

But what mattered most to Merrill, O’Borski and Challenger agreed, was the people around her.

“I would say she loved her family more than anything in the world,” Challenger, the oldest of her three grandchildren, said. “She just adored us.”

“No matter what I was doing, Doris somehow found a way to make the event special for me,” O’Borski said, saying that Merrill gave her a special memento for when O’Borski spoke at her own high school graduation.

“To her, all of those events in somebody’s life were so important to notice and congratulate them, and she did that with cards and notes and mementoes.”

Merrill’s husband Paul passed away in 1982. In her own words, she said in 2015 that it was her family that helped her forget the challenges.

“When we were with our grandchildren, we forgot,” she said. “We forgot we were sick, we forgot we were older. We made games out of everything from laundry to cleaning their room. They were working and they didn’t even realize it.”