Marilyn Joyce Miller Skylar's Obituary
Marilyn Joyce Miller Skylar, writer, golfer and long-time Cleveland resident, died Aug. 5 at
94. She was preceded in death by her husband, David Skylar, former publisher of Sun
Newspapers, who died in 2016.
At the age of 89, Mrs. Skylar published “Tales from a Mad Man's Wife,” a book about her
David’s advertising and newspaper career. In it she provided an intimate look at the life of
an advertising "mad man" of the ’50s and ’60s, whose work brought him into contact with
Presidents Eisenhower and Ford as well as celebrities such as Liberace, Leonard
Bernstein, Jayne Mansfield and Eartha Kitt.
She met her husband of 67 years at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where both
majored in journalism.
She was founder and president of the sorority Beta Theta Phi. At the university she started
“Fanfare for 50,” which named the most prominent coeds in journalism.
Upon graduation in 1948, she returned to Shaker Heights where she worked for the
Cleveland Press as a “copy boy.” She was paid $27.40 a week. When she was offered a job
as a secretary in the Business Department, she quit. “I didn’t want to be a secretary,” she
said in an interview in 2016.
She got a job in public relations at the National Recreation Dept., where she received $60 a
week. She was proud of the fact she got the Recreation Department mentioned on the
Arthur Godfrey show.
After leaving work to raise a family, she continued to write limericks and poetry, including a
feminist musical history of The Women’s City Club in 1969. She was also a stringer for the
Press and Plain Dealer. For the latter, she wrote a front page story that reported Sen.
Howard Metzenbaum’s neighbors were outraged by noise created from helicopters flying
him home. She didn’t receive a byline for the story, which she blamed on the era’s sexism.
The youngest of seven children, Mrs. Skylar was born in 1926 to Isaac and Rebecca Miller,
who were Russian immigrants. Miller, along with Eli Becker, founded the Cotton Club
Bottling and Canning Co. in 1902, one of Cleveland’s earliest and most prominent Jewish
businesses. Artifacts from the company are displayed today at the Maltz Museum of Jewish
History.
As a child she took dancing, acrobatic, elocution and acting lessons. She performed at the
Cleveland Play House’s Curtain Pullers children’s theatre program in the 1940s, along with
Paul Newman and Joel Grey, She played Grey’s mother when she was 14 in a play called
“Subgum.”
She secretly took flying lessons as a teenager, hoping to get her pilot’s license. The plan
was derailed when her mother found out.
She attended Shaker Heights High School, before graduating from the Lear School in
Miami, Fla. in 1944, where she and her mother spent winters after her father died in 1939.
A member of Oakwood Country Club, Mrs. Skylar was an avid tennis player and golfer. She
shot five holes in one, which she found a mixed blessing because, “I had to buy drinks for
everyone.”
She was irrepressibly outspoken, tirelessly opinionated, and a famously discriminating diner
— except when it came to chocolate, when M&Ms would do. She was known to pack tuna
fish cans in her luggage when she traveled internationally.
Survivors include Claudia (James Mastro) Skylar; Dean (Christine Ledbetter) Skylar; and
Stephanie (Eric) Hench. She is survived by six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Services will be held in November; burial is at Mayfield Cemetery.
In remembrance of Marilyn Skylar’s life, the family requests donations be made to the
Cleveland Play House (Education). Go to clevelandplayhouse.com/support
What’s your fondest memory of Marilyn?
What’s a lesson you learned from Marilyn?
Share a story where Marilyn's kindness touched your heart.
Describe a day with Marilyn you’ll never forget.
How did Marilyn make you smile?
