News

 By Emily J. Minor
    
DELRAY BEACH — Marion Cousins, who ran a meticulous dress shop on Atlantic Avenue back in the day when proper ladies never wore slacks to lunch, died Feb. 13 after a brief hospital stay. She was 100.
    Ms. Cousins was born July 5, 1911, in Detroit, Mich. She spent her early childhood in the small Michigan town of Northville, just outside Detroit, but moved to the larger college town of Ann Arbor when she was a teenager.
    As a young adult, she helped her parents run J.H. Cousins, a ladies apparel shop, and apparently had quite a knack for the business. Later, she moved to Delray Beach, where in 1971 she opened a second J.H. Cousins dress store.
    Although she would shutter the Florida store for most long, hot summers, Cousins loved her Florida lifestyle and lived atop the store for many years, remember several longtime Atlantic Avenue merchants.
    Ms. Cousins, who never married but considered her nieces and nephews her own children, closed the store for good in 1996, living there until the end with her beloved cat, Trouble.
    Connie Wichman, the buyer at the department store Mercer Wenzel, who joined that family business about the same time Ms. Cousins opened her Florida dress shop, said Cousins’ store was known for its beautiful apparel and simple, elegant design.
    “Dresses were sort of a way of life back then,” Wichman said. “When ladies would go to lunch or go to church, they would always wear dresses. And Cousins had a beautiful dress department.”
    Wichman said she loved going by the store with its large front windows and admiring the racks “where everything was displayed so beautifully.”
    But after 25 years in business — Ms. Cousins was over the bridge on Atlantic and on the east end of the street, near the ocean — Ms. Cousins left at the time several other major retailers also said goodbye to the avenue, opening up the retail landscape for preppier, more modern stores.
    Always somewhat of a firecracker, if you will, Ms. Cousins was an avid reader who loved reading The Wall Street Journal.
    She is survived by one sister, and several nieces and nephews, all of whom live out of state.
    Family and friends honored her life at a service Feb. 25 in her girlhood town of Northville and at a memorial service March 1 in Delray Beach.