Marjorie Ruth McDaniel

Marjorie Ruth Schneiter McDaniel, 93, died peacefully in her sleep at home in Hickory early Wednesday, March 29. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, she was a National Honor Society student in high school and graduated with a four-year degree from Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio in 1951. It was there that she met and became engaged to her husband of 50 years, the Rev. Dr. Michael McDaniel, who was then a seminary student on the Wittenberg campus. They married in 1952 and a year later began their lives together of Christian ministry for the Lutheran church in Faith, North Carolina. New challenges and opportunities took them to Savannah, Georgia; Englewood, New Jersey; Chicago, Illinois; Hamburg, Germany; and back to Chicago and Springfield, Ohio, before coming to Hickory in the summer of 1971. Throughout the years, Mrs. McDaniel was mother and homemaker, pastor’s wife, and occasionally a church secretary. When her husband was elected bishop of the North Carolina Synod of the Lutheran Church in America in 1982 and they moved to Salisbury, she focused her energies on helping him keep up with correspondence, review of professional journals and other publications, and travelling safely around the state, country and abroad. When they returned to Hickory and Lenoir-Rhyne in 1991, she continued and expanded her outreach to other Lutheran pastors’ wives, organizing regular get togethers, and after her husband’s death in 2003, she was an active leader and participant in the Grief Share meetings and programs hosted by Hickory’s Corinth Reformed church. In recent years, she took great pleasure in painting watercolors and making and sending hundreds of notecards to friends and family observing birthdays and anniversaries of events both happy and sad. She also gave as gifts many of her paintings and hundreds of her hand-decorated cards for use by others.

In addition to her husband, Marjorie was preceded in death by her parents, Elmer Robert and Clara Roemer Schneiter and sister Dorothy Schneiter MacNaughton. She is survived by a brother, George Schneiter, son John McDaniel (Barbara) of Hickory, and grandchildren Katherine McDaniel (Eric Clack), Andrew McDaniel, and Christine McDaniel.

A memorial service will be held at Grace Lutheran Church in Newton on Saturday, April 15, at 11 a.m. The Rev. Gil Gilbert, the Rev. Dr. Nathan Yoder, and the Rev. Dr. Andrew Weisner will be officiating. A reception will follow in the Fellowship building. A private interment ceremony will be held Sunday in Mt. Pleasant, North Carolina.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to WDAV, (WDAV, Davidson College, Box 8900, Davidson, NC 28035-8990) Marjorie’s favorite radio station and faithful companion and source of joy through many years of gradual loss of her vision and declining health. Or The McDaniel-Yoder Center for Theology, NALC Carolinas Mission Region (PO Box 6381, Hickory, NC 28603).

Online condolences may be made at www.gordonfuneralhome.com.