LITTLE ROCK — Marcelline Evans Giroir lived her life to the fullest, whether she was taking road trips with her friends or white-water rafting.
“She had a zest for life. She had the biggest spirit of adventure of anyone I’ve ever met,” said her niece,Janne Siegel. “She liked her life, she liked her freedom and to travel.”
Giroir died Tuesday at St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center in Little Rock from heart failure.
She was 75.
As a child, Giroir developed a love of classical music after she watched her mother give music lessons in their Pine Bluff home. In the late 1950s, Giroir graduated from Marymount College in Tarrytown, N.Y., and received a scholarship to study and teach music in Rome.
“She went over to Rome by herself and studied music. She didn’t know a soul but found her way,” Siegel said. “She was always a career woman. She was ahead of her time.”
For 17 years, Giroir worked for Arkansas Power and Light Co. and a few years in between for Middle South Utilities in New Orleans, helping the companies switch their accounting practices to computers. In 1986, she founded Marcelline Giroir Limited real estate company in Little Rock.
“She traded houses about once a year. ... I can remember 10 of her homes she lived in over a period of 20 years,” her brother said. “Most people dread the idea of moving and all the details, but she enjoyed it.”
For 21 years, Giroir helped clients find their dream homes, while her own sense of home was wherever her heart desired to go.
“She pretty much covered the globe,” Joe Giroir said. “She took a number of trips to Europe, Asia, South America.”
In the 1970s and ’80s, Giroir and her then-boyfriend went with about 11 othercouples on road races in Arkansas and the surrounding states. Whoever arrived at the mystery location first got a prize and clues were given to the women, who navigated, while the men drove, said friend Fufa Fullerton.
“We just had a really good, fun time for probably 15 years,” Fullerton said, recalling the time they wound up at the Fort Worth honky-tonk Billy Bob’s Texas. “Marcelline and I both had enough sense not to try to ride the [mechanical] bull.”
During an Alaskan cruise, Giroir, who was 49 at the time, and her niece took a plane ride to explore a glacier.
“We landed on top of a glacier and hiked around,” Siegel said. “We got in the little dinghy boat, the waves were just rushing. ... It wasn’t that she just went somewhere, she always experienced where she went.”
Giroir was happiest celebrating her French heritage, from dining in Paris to making her own coq au vin at her Little Rock home.
Although she developed corticobasal degeneration - a neurological disorder - Giroir still attended meetings of the Aesthetic Club and performances by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.
“She was a true Southern lady, a very accomplished musician, quite a scholar,” said friend, Mary Berry. “Her style was very low key. ... She supported the arts in all sorts of ways.”
Giroir was like a second mother to her two nieces and loved to joke with them when they were young.
“She’d have a glass of wine, and we’d put in salt and sugar and completely wreck her wine,” Siegel said. “She’d taste it and get this funny face and just start laughing.”
Always in high spirits, Giroir kept a sense of humor, even in recent days when she had been sick.
“She said, ‘I can’t guarantee you I’m not pregnant,’” her niece said. “That was just her sense of humor.”
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 12/07/2012