Merille Hewitt

Merille Hewitt, of Asheville, North Carolina, died on March 26, 2018 at age 94.

Mrs. Hewitt was born on June 7, 1923, in Huntington, WV, one of the five children of Archibald Merille Hewitt and Ruth Campbell Hewitt, all of whom died earlier. Her older sisters were Nancy Frazier Hewitt and Ruth Hewitt Reese of Huntington, and Marianne Hewitt Mann of Birmingham, AL. Her younger brother was The Very Reverend Archibald Merille Hewitt, Jr. of Helena MT. She graduated in 1941 from The Knox School, then in Cooperstown, NY, and in 1945 from Hollins College, Roanoke VA, with a Bachelor of Arts degree and major in history.

She married the late Joseph Ebner Glover in 1946, whose work with Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso) caused them to move throughout Latin America, where three of their four daughters were born. After their marriage ended in the 1970s, she returned to the American South and the Appalachian mountains to join family that had relocated throughout the region: first to Sewanee, TN; then Birmingham and Waynesville, NC, before settling in Deerfield Episcopal Retirement Community in Asheville in 2014.

Mrs. Hewitt was an exceptional all-around athlete, from basketball, dressage, to golf (a scratch player) as a girl, and adding tennis and sailing in her maturity. She also had a fine trained contralto voice, publicly performing opera, art song, sacred music, and gospel music. Her love of quilting, an art learned late in life, and her pleasure in advanced electronic sewing machines made her a popular figure at quilt shops. She consistently dismissed her skills but her quilts demonstrated a keen sense of color and precise piecing. Her deep attachment to traditional Americana and to forests and mountains appeared in her choice of patterns and such evocative titles as “Fire on the Mountain.” Though intensely private, she engaged even strangers with memorable genuine warmth. The grit that moved her to take flying lessons in her seventies, in order to face her fear of flying, shaped her approach to all life’s challenges.

She is survived by her daughters and their families: Suzanne Glover Lindsay (Bruce), Merille Campbell Glover (Dennis), Victoria Glover Allain, and Jo Anne Glover (Chris); three grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren; and a large extended family.

Rites will be private.

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