Marion Yvonne Ramsey Daue, 96

Marion Yvonne Ramsey Daue departed her life on Tuesday, June 22, 2021, five days before her 97th birthday.

Marion was born at home on June 27, 1924, in the small town of New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital city. Marion was an excellent student and learned to play both the saxophone and the piano as a schoolgirl. In high school she was the only girl in her trigonometry and physics classes. In the early 1930s, when passenger air travel was new and open cockpit airplanes were still common, her grandparents survived the Great Depression by owning and operating a small restaurant at the Harrisburg-York Airport, the newly built airport for Pennsylvania’s capital city. Pilots would spot Marion playing along the airport’s only runway and call out “Hey kid, want a ride?” Away she would soar — usually without her grandparents’ knowledge or permission — in the back of open air two-seaters, loving the thrill of her secret adventures in the sky. Her grandmother would make lunches for pilots and passengers when planes landed to refuel. Marion willingly delivered these meals because it gave her the opportunity to meet celebrity flying pioneers Amelia Earheart and Charles Lindbergh and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

After the start of World War II, Marion determined to pursue a career in nursing. In 1943 she took the train from New Cumberland to Baltimore, Maryland, where she enrolled in the University of Maryland’s School of Nursing. The tuition was $25. Marion worked for a year at the Olmstead Army Airfield to earn the money.

In 1946 Marion graduated from the University of Maryland as a registered nurse. During her university studies, she developed an affinity for operating room nursing and was selected by the hospital’s chief of surgery and head of the university’s Department of Surgery, Dr. Arthur Shipley, to be his dedicated operating room “scrub” nurse.

In 1947 Marion met and married Edwin O. Daue, Jr., M.D., recently returned from four years of war in the South Pacific. Dr. Daue served as a U.S. Army captain and trauma surgeon in a MASH unit during some of the heaviest fighting in the Pacific Theater. They met in the operating room at Baltimore’s University Hospital.

Marion is survived by her sister, Mardee Morrison, of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania; her daughter, Caryn Gronvold, of Kalispell; her son, E. Craig Daue and wife Peggy Daue, of Missoula; her daughter, Debra Daue, of Kalispell; her grandsons, Erik Gronvold and wife Beth Sterner of Altamonte Springs, Florida, Alex Daue and wife Andrea West of Glenwood, Colorado, and Nick Daue of Los Angeles; her four great- grandchildren, Grace Gronvold, Anderson Gronvold, Sage Daue and Micah Daue; nieces, Gabrielle Shaykin and Toni Taylor of New Hampshire and Cindy Stone of Pennsylvania, and nephew Marc Toporcer of Pennsylvania; cousins, Robert Breese, Linda Brian and Sheri Thurber; and many grandnieces and grandnephews.

Marion was predeceased by her husband Edwin in 1987.

Marion also leaves her best and dearest friend, Eileen Ayers, of Kalispell. Marion’s family and friends knew her as a talented baker and cook. She was famous for her Christmas cookies, pies, pastries and sticky buns. She baked for hospital auxiliary bazaars, her husband’s surgical patients, her children’s college roommates, her grandchildren and their friends and the ski lift operators at Big Mountain, where she skied until she was 87. Marion joined the Summit Fitness Center when it first opened in 1995, the year she moved to Kalispell. She walked the track and was a faithful participant in water aerobics until the age of 91. At 71 she joined a hiking club and hiked the trails of Glacier Park.

Marion was a generous contributor to charitable efforts all her life and was known for her generosity. She drove for Meals on Wheels and put care packages together for U.S soldiers in Iraq. She was a formidable Scrabble player, loved to read, watch birds and solve puzzles. In the late 2000s Marion and daughter Debra traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where in 1863 Marion’s great-great-grandfather — a soldier in the Bucktail Brigade of the 150th Pennsylvania Regiment — lost a leg at the Battle of Gettysburg. Marion donated her great-grandfather’s treasured Union Army bucktail and a rare Civil War memoir to the Gettysburg College Library.

At Marion’s request no funeral services will be held. She will be interred with her husband at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

Her family requests that any friends wishing to make a donation in memory of Marion please consider making a contribution to Meals on Wheels, the Kalispell ImagineIF Library, or the Flathead Audubon Society.