Portland - Gloria Kathleen O’Brien Stover died Friday, January 18th, 2019 at Maine Medical Center. She was 94. A word to describe the strength, resilience, and zest that drove and shaped the arc of those 94 years? Family and friends who knew her, as well as people she encountered in the many communities she served and touched, often used this word: Amazing. This quietly delighted her.
She was born in Worchester, Massachusetts on Nov. 30th, 1924. Her mother, Alice Mary Edwards, had arrived in the U.S. from Liverpool, England at age sixteen to work as a nanny. Her (step) father, Fred O’Brien, was a fireman from Rhode Island. Together they raised six children (Gloria the eldest) in a basement tenement on Chandler St. Gloria’s mother was widowed when Gloria was 15; a connection with Volunteers of America not only provided what she saw as “my haven to escape the poverty and unstable home atmosphere,” but also “really started me on the road to helping people in need.”
That Volunteer connection eventually led to work, summers, and a deepening sense of family in Maine. She, too, found a job as a nanny at age 16 and worked at Western Union singing telegrams from 3 to 11 pm for 75 cents an hour. This was 1940. The couple she kept house for (Frank and Elizabeth Knott) invited her to Maine to finish her senior year at Scarborough High School. After graduation, she worked as a weld-cleaner in a South Portland shipyard (1943-1945), one of the original “Rosie the Riveters” who remembered “the pay was great [with] coveralls, kerchief, and dinner pail in tow.”
Commuting by bus to the shipyard, she saw an ad for the Cadet Nurse Corps; she interviewed at Maine General Hospital in the spring of 1945 and began her 59-year nursing career that September. Her three years of training (1945-48) gave her another sense of family with her 60 fellow cadets; it also gave her a vocation specializing in maternity at Maine Medical Center, where she was head nurse on that floor for 18 years, then worked in discharge planning and an occasional per diem, not putting her R.N. license on inactive status until November 2001 (age 77!).
Gloria, too, became a mother. Her marriage to Albert Stover in October 1948 produced three children (Candice, Cynthia, and Jeffrey); after their divorce in 1976, she drew again on that strength, resilience, and zest to create an engaged and independent life that included active participation as a member of her beloved Woodfords Congregational Church (serving as deacon, lay minister, and in the knitting group and soup kitchen), Women’s Literary Union and Zonta International, where she was given an honorary membership following 37 years (1977-2014), of helping women better their lives in the world.
You could also find Gloria playing golf or bridge, making homemade Needhams to share at Christmas, taking a favorite beach walk, knitting mittens and sweaters, or driving her “silver- streak mica” Toyota, a car and an activity she dearly loved: traveling!
She is survived by her two daughters, Candice Stover and her husband Jeff Toman of Somesville, Maine, and Cynthia (Cindy) of Portland; her son Jeffrey of Florida; her half-sister Connie of Williamsburg, Virginia; a special nephew, Ron Downing of Novato, CA; “Punkie” Stover and the extended Stover family; her dear Woodfords Congregational Church family, friends at Park Danforth, and the great range of humanity her service work touched.
The family wishes to thank Gloria’s loving friend and fellow MMC coffee shop volunteer Susan Hall of South Portland and the Rev. Carolyn Lambert of Woodfords for their care and attention to Gloria.
A Celebration of Life (Gloria loved bright colors especially red and turquoise) will be held at Woodfords Congregational Church on Saturday, March 2, 2019 at 1pm. Donations in her memory may be made to Woodfords or a volunteer organization of your choice.
To offer the family your condolences and to sign Gloria’s online guestbook, please visit www.jonesrichandbarnes.com
SHARE OBITUARY
v.1.8.18