Marcella Grendler

1939 - 2022

Marcella Grendler
May 12, 1939 - September 2, 2022
Chapel Hill, North Carolina - Marcella Terese Grendler died in her sleep after a courageous ten-year battle with ovarian cancer. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Peter J. McCann and Helen Lavin McCann. She grew up on the southwest side of Chicago and attended elementary and secondary school in Chicago. Marcella graduated with a bachelor of arts summa cum laude from Mundelein College in Chicago in 1960 with a major in history and a minor in French.
Marcella had three fulfilling careers in her life. The first was as a student and scholar. She began graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison with the aid of a Woodrow Wilson Graduate Studies Fellowship and received her Master of Arts in Medieval History in 1962. On June 16, 1962, she married Paul F. Grendler. And in October 1962, she and Paul left for a year of research in Italy, the first of many trips to Italy for Marcella.
In 1964 Marcella began doctoral studies at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. This included spending the academic year 1967-1968 in dissertation research in Florence, Italy, with the support of a Canada Council Dissertation Fellowship. She received her doctor of philosophy in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto in June 1970 with a dissertation in Italian Renaissance history. Her dissertation was supervised by the late Fr. Leonard Boyle O.P., who later became the prefect (director) of the Vatican Library. Marcella published her dissertation as a book in 1973, and it received the Society of Italian Historical Studies prize as the best book of the year in Italian history. In the following years she published several articles on Italian Renaissance libraries.
Her second career was as a special collections librarian. In 1977 Marcella began a three-year appointment as a research associate at the library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she catalogued and prepared a finding aid for a large collection of Italian books. She obtained a Master of Library Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1981. She then served as a program officer of the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C. from 1981 to 1986, where she supervised the adjudication and implementation of financial grants that funded bibliographies and finding aids for archival and library collections.
In 1986 Marcella Grendler was appointed Associate University Librarian for the Special Collections at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in which capacity she oversaw the operations of eight special collection units, five of them located in the Wilson Library. She worked with her fellow librarians and members of the faculty to obtain significant funding in order to make many documents concerning the history of North Carolina and the American South, such as The Church in the Southern Black Community collection, available digitally to scholars and the public. She retired from her library position in 2001.
Marcella Grendler then embarked on a third career as a volunteer and lively participant in the activities of the North Carolina Botanical Garden (NCBG). She joined the Garden as a member in 1992, and was a Director of the NCBG Foundation from 2007 to 2013 and an Honorary Director since 2016. Her contributions were always practical and fruitful. She volunteered with many NCBG groups, including the Green Dragons of the Coker Pinetum and the Cokernuts of the Coker Arboretum, helping to eradicate invasive plants. She made several leadership gifts for equipment to support the work of the staff including a truck, a 4X4 vehicle, and shower facilities in the LEED Platinum building. She created hand-sewn, garden-themed batik napkins, placemats, and other items to be sold, with the proceeds going to the NCBG. In 2021 she was honored as a Hometown Hero by WCHL.
She is survived by her spouse of sixty years Paul Grendler, and by their children Peter Grendler of San Francisco and Jean Katherine Grendler of Chapel Hill. Her body was cremated and her ashes will be scattered in a favorite place. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Marcella's honor to benefit the Coker Arboretum Improvement Fund (525403) via on-line (ncbg.unc.edu) or by check. Please make checks payable to and send to North Carolina Botanical Garden Foundation, CB # 3375, UNC Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3375. Those who which to donate to another unit of the NCBG should send checks to the same address. A celebration of life is scheduled to held at the NCBG on September 27 at 4 p.m.