Leaving her mark

Summers in Maine were a welcome reprieve from the routine of suburban life for Marilyn Malnati.

Every summer, she left the enclave of Bronxville, N.Y., a few miles north of Manhattan to enjoy the solitude and forests surrounding her parents’ resort lodge. 

“Being an only child in the backwoods of Maine, you learn to entertain yourself,” she said, reflecting on a childhood now eight decades in the past.

One year in particular stands out. It was the summer her parents hired a dietitian to work at the lodge. 

“I kind of followed her around and I thought, ‘Gee, this is fun,’ ” Marilyn remembered. “I would go to the grocery store with her and I just picked up on what she did.”

Years later, U.S. Steel transferred Marilyn’s dad from New York to Atlanta, which is how she eventually wound up on the campus of the University of Georgia in the early 1950s.

When it came time to declare a major, Marilyn settled on dietetics in what was then the School of Home Economics.

“I can’t even remember her name, but I enjoyed what she did and I thought, ‘Well, that sounds pretty good,’” she said, recalling those post-Depression years she spent tagging along with the dietitian.

She just said ‘We’re going to do this'

One night, a sorority sister set her up on a blind date with a Georgia swimmer and College of Agriculture student named Bill Russell, the son of a cattle herdsman. He took her to the drive-in to watch “The Moon is Blue.”

“He spent the entire night talking about this beautiful, brown-eyed girl,” Marilyn said. “And I’m thinking ‘Why am I sitting here?’ At the end of the story, he tells me it’s a cow, his beautiful Sally Mae. And I thought, OK, that’s the last time I’ll see him.”

Only it wasn’t. A year later, the two met again at a sorority social.

“He was coming down the stairs and I turned to my sorority sister and I said ‘I’m going to marry him,’ ” she remembered.

Marilyn was right. They got married in September 1955 and made their home in Athens. Bill raised cattle and Marilyn raised their three kids, Beth, Clifton Andrew (“C.A.”) and “Little Bill” while working as a dietitian at St. Mary’s.

Life changed dramatically in 1976 when Bill died of a heart attack at 44, leaving Marilyn with three teenagers to raise. Times were tough, but C.A. said his mother’s resolve never wavered.

She worked three jobs, served in the church and booster clubs and made sure the kids started each day with fresh squeezed orange juice and sent them off with a sack lunch that always included some kind of fruit.

“There were so many times she could’ve given up but she just kept putting her head down and moving forward,” he said. “She just said ‘We’re going to do this’ and you guys are going to stay in school and if you need anything, I’m going to provide it for you.”

Family, Jersey cows and Bulldogs

Marilyn continued to work at St. Mary’s until her retirement in 1997. In 2000, she remarried to Julio “Doc” Malnati, a family friend and retired veterinarian who became highly accomplished as a breeder of Jersey cows.

After Julio died in 2012, Marilyn moved in with Beth in Demorest. Family and cows have remained the constants in her life, going back to that first date when Marilyn came in second to a brown-eyed Jersey.

C.A. became a dairy farmer himself, operating farms in North Carolina and nearby Bowersville. Marilyn visits every Thursday.

“Oh, they’re so gentle and so pretty,” she said. “And they give wonderful milk.”

Another constant in her life has been the University of Georgia. Both C.A. and Bill received their degrees here and Marilyn still spends Saturdays in the fall sweating out every Georgia victory.

“I think Kirby is fantastic,” she said.

Leaving a legacy

When her children began thinking about Marilyn’s legacy, UGA rose to the forefront. 

They recalled all the basketball games they attended together and the football games they spent watching from the hill when they couldn’t get tickets, and of course their parents’ own love story that goes all the way back to that fateful night at the drive-in.

“She was instrumental in us developing a love for UGA,” C.A. said.

Owing to those memories and the impact the university had on all their lives, Marilyn made a $1 million gift to her alma mater, the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, earlier this year.

The gift will be used to renovate the college’s foods labs, which are instrumental in preparing future dietitians for careers in the industry.

“Education was always important to mom,” C.A. said. “I think being able to invest in the youth and invest in someplace where you believe it will be used well is so important.”

On a recent visit to Dawson Hall, Marilyn, now 93, found the place unrecognizable from her days as an undergraduate.

“It was a little overwhelming,” she said, marveling at how the place has grown from the days of saddle shoes and long skirts. “We didn’t have all that.”

When she left that day, she knew she had made the right decision to invest in the place that helped make her career possible – and hopefully help launch hundreds more.

“I’m just grateful that it will not only be used for this new addition, but possibly more that’s coming,” she said. “Because we didn’t have microwaves when I was here. What are we going to have next?”