Funeral services are set today for Marilyn Bell, who ran one of downtown Santa Fe's last locally owned department stores. She died Thursday after suffering a stroke early Tuesday at her home.

Bell was born Marilyn Bearman on Dec. 17, 1926, to Polish and Russian Jews who had immigrated to Birmingham, Ala.

As a young woman, she worked for a Southern architecture firm. One summer, she rented a room at the Barbizon Hotel for Women in New York City, where she attended plays and musicals and got to meet Joe DiMaggio and Henry Fonda.

Around 1960, she traveled West to visit her brother, Leroy Bearman, a sports editor with the Albuquerque Journal. During a trip to Santa Fe to visit Leroy's fraternity brother, she was introduced to one of the city's young business leaders, Irving Bell.

In 1926, Irving's father, Morris, an immigrant from Lithuania, had opened a general merchandise store at 114 W. San Francisco St., then branched out to Taos, Tierra Amarilla, Grants and Española, where Irving was born. After service in the Army Air Corps, he took over the family stores.

"After a short courtship, Mom and Dad got married in Birmingham," according to a biography written by the couple's sons, Lance and Jon. "When Mom first arrived in Santa Fe along with her strong Southern accent and different style than the laid-back attitude of Santa Fe, she felt like she had to leave town to find civilization. Dirt roads were something she was not accustomed to, nor Santa Fe's unique population of Indians or Spanish-speaking people, nor spicy New Mexican food."

Marilyn learned to love her adopted home and soon added red chile to her repertoire of Southern dishes, Jewish delicacies and sumptuous desserts, Lance and Jon wrote.

Bell's Department Store sold shoes, luggage, children's clothes, ready-to-wear men's and women's clothes, Stetson and Resistol hats, and more Levi's jeans than anyone else in Santa Fe, the sons wrote. The store soon moved next door to a larger building at 116 W. San Francisco St., the former site of 19th century merchant Charles Ilfeld's Santa Fe store.

In the 1970s, Irving remodeled the store to add "Marilyn's Place" for young women. "Mom loved to help these young girls pick out the perfect outfit and was never afraid to give unsolicited advice on fashion," her sons wrote. "She helped with most of the buying in all the departments at Bell's and took great pride in Bell's historical stature as one of the pioneer Jewish merchant families that were once so prevalent on the Santa Fe Plaza."

After Irving's death in 1981, Marilyn continued to run the store until early 1984 when she closed it, citing a rent increase by the building's new owner, Gerald Peters. Peters later disputed that he had raised the rent. The New Mexican reported at the time, "Bell's joins a growing list of downtown merchants who have moved away from the Plaza ... (citing) rising rent, a lack of parking and a dwindling local retail community downtown."

After the store closed, Marilyn traveled some but mostly enjoyed staying at home in Sol y Lomas, where she cooked, played the piano and kept up with the latest Hollywood gossip. She fondly recalled meeting the actress/dancer Ginger Rogers when she was in Santa Fe for a film festival in the early 1980s.

Survivors include son Jon of Albuquerque, his wife Sherry and their two sons, Alec and Aaron; and son Lance, his wife Julia and their daughter Jacquelyne. Her brothers Leroy and Marvin Bearman preceded her in death.

Funeral services are planned for 2 p.m. today at Congregation Beit Tikva on Old Pecos Trail. Burial will follow at Memorial Gardens.

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.