Margaret Doran Glaser - 96
Registered Nurse, Pioneer Stewardess Margaret Doran Glaser, a registered nurse who was one of the first trans-Atlantic airline stewardesses and a long-time resident ofCenterport, Lake Ronkonkoma, and Sunrise Assisted Living in Smithtown, has died of natural causes at the age of 96. An avid music lover of Irish and Dutch lineage, she was born Margaret Doran Gildersleeve in New York, in 1925, and grew up on the North Fork of Long Island where she attended Mattituck High School and played the glockenspiel in the marching band. Eschewing the prospect of becoming a local telephone operator, her adventurous spirit and compassionate nature led Margaret to opt for nursing instead and she earned her RN certification at Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica, Queens.At the outbreak of World War II Margaret was among the first women to enlist in the Women’s Army Corp and became a WAC nurse tending to wounded GIs returning from the battlefields of Europe. After the war, she leapt at the chance to become one of the first trans-Atlantic stewardesses when she was hired by American Overseas Airlines which required their stewardesses to be RNs. This was the pioneering era of long, unpressurized, low altitude DC-4 propeller plane flights over the stormy North Atlantic that were fraught with turbulence and lots of air-sick passengers. While flying with AOA she met her future husband, Edwin H Glaser, a former US Army Air Force B-17 bomber pilot who would go on to have a 33-year career as an international airline captain with Pan American World Airways. After she left the airlines to get married and settled in the post-war Levittown housing development for four years, Margaret and her husband moved to the wooded hills of Centerport on the North Shore where they built a hi-ranch home and raised three children. Later in life she moved to an apartment complex in Lake Ronkonkoma to be closer to her grandchildren and spent the final decade of her life as a cherished 10-year resident at Sunrise Assisted Living in Smithtown. Margaret is survived by her son James, son John, beloved daughter and loving care-giver Marianne, daughterin-law Susan, son-in-law Ulrich, granddaughter Christine, grandson Thomas, and great granddaughter Lucy Rae. Services will be held at Hawkins & Davis Funeral Home in Smithtown on Wednesday, January 5th,from 2-4pm and 7 to 9pm, and she will be interred on Thursday, January 6th at her husband’s site in Calverton National Cemetery in Riverhead, NY