- July 14, 2025
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Oakland resident Marilyn Mack talks about her childhood with great detail like it happened last week. The fourth of eight children born in 1938 to Robert and Sallie Bell Dobson, Mack was called the peculiar child, the tomboy who frequently climbed trees with the boys but preferred the solitude that came with spending time alone in her outdoor playhouse.
The family struggled to get by, and she and her siblings didn’t have toys, she said. They busied themselves rolling discarded tires in their Umatilla neighborhood, sharing an old one-pedal boys bike and creating makeshift dolls.
“I didn’t have dolls like they have now,” Mack said. “We had to pull grass up and shake the dirt out and make grass dolls. … We had that big, old, round pot, and they boil the water and put clothes in it — and I would put an old fork in it and get it hot and brush my grass-doll hair.”
As a child, she also had an affinity for sweeping — inside and outside.
“We had an old brush broom, and I would sweep the yard,” Mack said. “I didn’t want (anybody) to walk on the yard while I was working. And when I was done, you couldn’t see a track anywhere. I would sweep my footprints out and go inside.
“I would put on my mama’s high-heeled shoes and made up all the beds, there were about four beds, and then I would sweep up all the rooms and then I would take the broom and scrub the kitchen floor,” she said.
Mack now is 87 and has called Oakland home since 1984, when she married a local man named Hersey.
Mack is a familiar face at the many community events taking place in and around the town square, usually riding the few blocks from her home on her golf cart. For years, residents attending the Oakland Town Commission meetings felt the impact of her carefully selected words as she prayed before each meeting. She and her late husband, a deacon, trustee and custodian at the former St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, spent much of their time in faithful service to the church and congregation.
Mack has spent her entire life in service to the people close to her. Her desire to help others started at a young age when she enjoyed visiting the elderly folks in her community to sweep their floors, braid or curl their hair and read the Bible together.
Always an old soul, Mack found comfort in the company of senior women as they sat in a circle around a quilt propped up on sawhorses.
“Those ladies would be sitting with their buttercup snuff in their mouth and their little cup,” she said. “I was so happy to have a needle and learn how to quilt.”
Mack’s life was changed at the age of 12 when her daddy was shot and killed. After that, she and her siblings did what they could to keep the household together. She had to quit school in the 10th grade and earned money working for others: planting watermelons, cutting celery, picking oranges and cotton, and cleaning houses.
As an adult, she continued the outdoor seasonal work — picking apples, grapes and strawberries — in Germantown, New York, for years.
Another “job” she picked up in childhood and carried with her through adulthood — and which led her to meet her husband — was cooking dinners and selling them to people.
“We didn’t have money, and we would sell dinners and things: chitlin dinners and chicken dinners and fish sandwiches, potato pies and coconut pies and … those lemon pies with the merengue so pretty,” Mack said. “My mama did that when we were children, taking dinners to people, and we did that when we were grown.”
A mutual friend introduced Mack to her future husband, whom everyone referred to as Big Mack because of his size. The friend, Bea Kiner, was a missionary who traveled to various Lake County churches.
“She wasn’t getting much money, so she would fix dinners and sell them to people — A whole heap of food for $10,” Mack said. “She was selling dinners on Saturdays so she had money for transportation to go to these churches.”
On one particular Saturday, Kiner called Mack and told her to come pick up a dinner. Mack did so, against her will, but just for kicks put on her best dress and stockings and high heels to pick it up. Kiner convinced Mack to drive her to the homes of two elderly residents to drop off some dinners. Along the way, they passed Big Mack and Kiner talked him into stopping by later to get his own meal. There was no introduction. When he did, Mack piled high his plate of food, wrapped it up and gave it to him. Still, no introduction.
When Mack went home, she passed him on the road and honked her horn at him. He was intrigued and asked Kiner for Mack’s number.
The two were married six months later in April 1984, and began their life together in Oakland. They had no children together; he had one adult son and she had four grown children from previous relationships. They rented a tiny apartment from Mr. and Mrs. William Nixon before moving into a house with a family member after his wife died, and they remained there for decades.
Big Mack died two days after their 32nd wedding anniversary, and Mack still calls the house her home and keeps on display memories of their life together. Besides photos of the Macks, the house is filled with family photos and reminders of her lifelong faith.
Mack fills her days doing for others — after thanking God first thing every morning for giving her another day. She shares scriptures, music and prayers through a morning Holy Connection telephone chain. She walks around her neighborhood, visiting infirmed and homebound friends to read the Bible, share stories and clean their homes. She dog sits.
If she gets a spam telephone call, which she routinely does throughout the day, she answers the phone with, “Talk to Jesus,” and then disconnects the call.
On Thursdays, she plays games with the senior citizens at the West Orange Dream Center. She’s working on getting her high school equivalency diploma.
“I go to a class to get my (General Educational Development),” Mack said. “I’m hoping and praying one day I can get it. I just take one day at a time.”
She likes working in her yard and checking on her flowers and fruit trees, but she said she’s never out there long before a neighbor reminds her she’s not supposed to be doing that.
Mack’s favorite place in Oakland is the Jake Voss Pier on Lake Apopka.
“I love to get on the golf cart and go to the dock,” she said. “I like to go and look at the water and talk to the Lord and talk about how the spirit moved on the water first, and I like to pray, and I like to stand there and let the Lord have his way with me for a few minutes.”
