Marvin Heller brought people together. His Columbia garden keeps his work going
Down the street from the house where his own roots were planted, in the close-knit neighborhood where he lived out his 63 years, Marvin Heller’s name lives on in a garden that flourished under his watch.
A “change agent,” an “angel,” a “pillar” of the community, Heller remains a strong presence in Columbia’s Lyon Street neighborhood just over a year after his death. On Saturday, friends, family and community leaders will gather to dedicate in his honor the community garden Heller helped plant.
“He saw the potential of the neighborhood. He saw potential more than challenge,” said his sister, Leslie Young, a Columbia attorney.
The four Heller siblings grew up on McDuffie Avenue in the 1960s and ‘70s, where they were “taught, generally, to make life better, and not just for ourselves,” Young said. “Marvin would say he never left the neighborhood because our family has lived there for more than 100 years. It was his heritage, his home, and he lived among people of various socioeconomic circumstances who were all good people, and potential was limitless.”
Decades later, Marvin Heller would step up as a leader in the neighborhood, helping to tamp down crime, connect residents with needed services, advocate for affordable housing and education, influence city policy and build bridges between Lyon Street and other areas of Columbia.
“It was always about community. It was not about Marvin Heller,” said Columbia Councilman Ed McDowell, who represents the Lyon Street community. A longtime friend of Heller’s, McDowell recalls they’d often run into one another in the Five Points Food Lion grocery store and wind up spending a half hour talking together in the parking lot. “He was a change agent, and that’s a thing I loved most about Marvin, that he was able to bridge the gap.”
One of Heller’s first steps in leading the community came in the early 1990s, when the neighborhood was suffering from drug-related crime, Young said.
When many people in the neighborhood were fearful of stepping forward to help police tackle problem areas, Heller was not afraid to stand up for his community, Young said.
“His point was, ‘When there’s trouble, I was taught to run home, as opposed to run from,’ so he stepped forward and even volunteered to walk (police) through the neighborhood,” Young said.
Heller became president of the Lyon Street community and held the position for years, becoming known across the city as a man whose advice and partnership was worth seeking.
But he was known more intimately by his family and friends as a jokester, a jazz and rock music enthusiast, and a man who loved to eat his way across Columbia’s restaurant scene. He “showered affection” on his family, Young said.
“To say the least, my uncle was the best,” said Darryl Jackson Jr., Heller’s nephew. “He was an angel on earth, for me, especially.”
Diagnosed with COVID-19 early in the state’s outbreak last year, Heller died suddenly, leaving his family and community in stunned sadness. The community garden, they say, is a fitting tribute to the man who spent hours cultivating it, the same way he cultivated good in the city.
“I know he’s smiling now. He took a lot of pride in making sure the garden is what it is today,” Jackson said. “His soul will definitely be on the grounds.”
“How admirable it is to name a garden after him,” said McDowell. “New growth, new possibilities springing up out of the old, and the old becomes new.”
The Marvin Heller Community Garden will be dedicated Saturday, May 1, at noon, with a celebration that is open to the public. It is located at the corner of McDuffie Avenue and Gervais Street.
This story was originally published April 30, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
