EAST BERNE — Roy Douglas “Doug” Marshall, of East Berne, loved broadly and had a strong service ethos.

He died after a brief battle with cancer on Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025, with family at his bedside. He was 82.

“After graduating from Voorheesville’s high school,” his daughter Cynthia Marshall St. Jean wrote in a tribute, “Doug attended Illinois Wesleyan where he met and married the love of his life, Margaret Lorraine ‘Midge’ Rowley, before settling back home in Slingerlands, New York.

“He enjoyed a long career as president of his family’s air-conditioning and refrigeration wholesaling business, the R.D. Marshall & Co., Inc, at 1 Marshall Place. He was a member and president of ARW, Albany Rotary, and recently joined Kiwanis.

“After selling the business, he founded Marshall Sales Agency serving New England, a profession that allowed him to regularly visit his New Hampshire grandchildren, before he and Midge moved down to her father’s home in North Carolina in 2014.

“Once there, he embarked on his third career as a Realtor for Coldwell Banker while also working as a volunteer in the Cardiac Rehab Program at Moore Regional Hospital. After Midge’s passing, he returned to New York in 2022.

“An avid boater, Doug earned his captain’s license, piloting boats on lakes, the Hudson and the Mississippi, the Erie Canal from end to end, and the ocean, but the place that held his heart was the small lake camp up in the Hilltowns that he built with his family when he was 9 years old. He was a hot-dogging water skier, record-setting swimmer, and could drive a boat as casually as walking down a street. 

“He loved broadly, had a booming laugh, and a resonant voice. A quick wit and gifted writer, he wrote many Old Men of the Mountain columns for The Altamont Enterprise. 

“Doug had a strong service ethos, and was always ready to help a person in need. He would gas up and plow a neighbor’s driveway, bring groceries to a food pantry, or lend his considerable muscles to a friend.”

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He leaves behind his sister Janet Sue Erickson and her husband, Jerry Erickson; daughter Cynthia Marshall St. Jean and son-in-law, James David St. Jean; daughter Pamela Sue Marshall; and grandsons James Douglas and Christopher Ryan St. Jean.

His wife, Midge Marshall, died before him, as did his parents, Richard Douglas and Ellen Broughton Marshall; and his sister Jo Ellen Marshall. 

The family will receive visitors at Applebee Funeral Home at 403 Kenwood Ave. in Delmar on Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026, from 1 to 4 p.m., with a time for sharing beginning at 3 p.m.