When 86-year-old Merriam Modell was struck by a Port Authority bus in 1994 and subsequently died, few Pittsburghers realized who she was. Modell, who wrote under the penname Evelyn Piper, was a very popular author of short stories and novels from the 1940s to the 1960s.
A New York City native, her short stories were first published in The New Yorker. She wrote several novels, including “The Sound of Years” and “My Sister, My Bride.” Later, some of her suspense stories were made into movies, including “Bunny Lake Is Missing,” starring Laurence Olivier and Carol Lynley, and “The Nanny,” featuring Bette Davis.
As a young single woman, Merriam Modell worked as a model, traveled to Europe and lived in Germany. “She did her own thing in her time and in her own way,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette quoted her son John Modell, a professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University, in an article about her death in 1994.
Dr. Walter Modell, Merriam’s husband, was the son of Russian immigrants. He attended one of News York City’s public elite academic high schools, the College of the City of New York, and Cornell Medical School. Throughout his career, he maintained an academic and research connection with Cornell and had his own private medical practice. Dr. Modell was also the founding editor of a journal on clinical pharmacology, which he ran for 25 years.
The Modells, who were married for nearly 60 years when Walter Modell died, lived most of their lives in New York City and its suburbs. They moved to Pittsburgh in 1987 to be near their son, and while they only lived here a short time, they chose to donate nearly $1.8 million of their estate to The Pittsburgh Foundation to establish the Walter and Merriam Modell Fund.
Because Merriam Modell was an avid reader and spent many days at The Carnegie Library, the first grant from the Walter and Merriam Modell Memorial Fund was made to The Carnegie Library, which helped electronically connect the Mon Valley’s Carnegie Library branches to the rest of the public libraries in Allegheny County.
Today, the Fund supports the Foundation’s unrestricted grantmaking, which our Program team then dedicates these resources to the greatest needs in the community.