Marjorie Groff

“We are remembering our mother over coffee this year. It is her first birthday since she has been gone—the first birthday we have not been able to celebrate with her. But we will celebrate her, remembering the life she lived and the memories she left behind.”

By Benjamin Groff II GroffMedia© | benandsteve.com | ©2026

August 21, 2026

This morning’s coffee tastes a little different.

We’re in Oklahoma.

^{_{Marjorie and her sister Opal Mae Burke}}

Yesterday, Steve and I carried my mother across the miles, with Otis faithfully keeping watch beside her. Somewhere along the way, the landscape began changing into something familiar.

Home.

It’s an interesting word, isn’t it?

We spend much of our lives deciding where home is. We move. We build lives elsewhere. We find people we love and create new homes with them. Yet there are places buried so deeply within us that merely seeing the countryside can awaken memories we didn’t realize were still there.

Today, Mom rests in Elk City.

It is a town woven into Steve’s and my story because this is where we met in 1982. We couldn’t have known then where the road ahead would take us.

And we certainly couldn’t have imagined that more than forty years later we would return together carrying my mother on the final miles of her journey.

Tomorrow will be different.

Tomorrow we will travel through country filled with family history.

We will take Mom near Sentinel, past the land where her parents made their home during the 1930s. We will continue toward Cordell, where my own story began, and then east toward Binger—the community where so much of our family’s life unfolded.

Tomorrow, my mother’s journey ends beside my father.

But not today.

Today is for remembering.

Today is for another cup of coffee, another Oklahoma morning, and the realization that sometimes going home isn’t about returning to a house.

Sometimes it is simply about returning to the people and places that made us who we are.

Until tomorrow, may your coffee stay warm, your memories stay close, and your hope stay strong. The coffee will be waiting again tomorrow, and I hope you’ll be here to share it with me.

— Benjamin Groff II
Morning Coffee at benandsteve.com

I recently created a short memorial video honoring my mother, Marjorie Bernice (McWhirter) Groff—centered around the final telephone call I shared with her not long before she passed. In those last moments, there was a quiet understanding, a tenderness in her voice, and a sense of closeness that words can hardly capture. This video reflects that conversation and the emotions carried within it—love, gratitude, and the unspoken bond between a mother and her child. While we will gather at a later time to celebrate her life more fully, this small tribute preserves one of our final connections, a moment I will carry with me always. ––– Benjamin Groff

Marjorie Bernice (McWhirter) Groff passed away on the evening of January 19, 2026, in Burns Flat, Oklahoma. She was nearing her 96th year—a life that spanned some of the most defining chapters in American history. Born in Sentinel, Oklahoma, during the Great Depression, she witnessed firsthand the hardships of the Dust Bowl, the resilience of post-war America, the uncertainty of the gas lines in the 1970s, and the ever-changing world of today. Alongside her husband, JD, she raised six children, building a life grounded in perseverance, faith, and family. In her final moments, she was not alone—two of her children remained faithfully by her side, just as she had so often been there for them throughout their lives.