Mercelie Derolus, 94: ‘She had a lot to give and she gave it to all of us’
This story is part of an ongoing Miami Herald series chronicling the lives of South Florida COVID-19 victims.
Even at 90 years old, Mercelie Derolus was an active and independent woman. Although she needed assistance at times, she refused to use a walker or cane. She would clean, sew, pray and even work out.
When her granddaughter, Sandra Paul, proposed removing a treadmill from the house, Derolus said no — then got on it and showed her granddaughter how she exercised.
“It would be nothing to go to her house and see her on an elliptical machine,” said another granddaughter, Nadine Rogers.
Derolus was the matriarch of the family, teaching and raising four generations — five children, eight grandchildren, a host of great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.
She died on April 17 from COVID-19. She was 94.
Born on Dec. 10, 1925, Derolus grew up in a big, extended family in Port-de-Paix, Haiti. Later, she made money selling items at the local flea market, then helped raise her nieces and nephews.
In the 1980s, she moved to the United States and roamed from North Miami to Montreal to care for her grandchildren.
“She loved kids, especially babies, so she loved babysitting and spending time with them,” said Paul.
She worked at a hotel in Orlando as a housekeeper for several months and helped her nephew, Jean Clarke, at Little Haiti Restaurant — located in the Miami neighborhood of the same name — preparing and serving meals for about five years.
“Her work after that just became taking care of our kids,” Paul said, adding she loved both children and animals.
While living with family in North Miami last year, Derolus fed the stray cats in the neighborhood. Coming across an unknown, funny scent in the house, the family searched everywhere for its origin. They didn’t own pets and didn’t like them much. Then they discovered there was a cat in the house.
Turns out Derolus was harboring a fat feline under her bed, and no one knew how long it had been there.
Soon the family came up with a compromise: Derolus would set the cat free, but then she could feed the rest of the neighborhood cats — only far away from the house.
“My grandmother did so much for so many people,” said Rogers. “She may not have been rich by the world’s standard, but she was very, very rich. She had a lot to give and she gave it to all of us.”
Bianca Marcof, a Florida International University journalism student, wrote this story for the Miami Herald.
