Former resident, active in League of Women Voters
Margaret Bliss, 76, of Willow Grove, Brunswick, Maine, died Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011, at Mid Coast Hospital.
She was born in Orange, N.J., on Sept. 25, 1934, a daughter of Edward and Caroline Bliss Taylor. Margaret attended Swansea Elementary School and graduated from Northfield School for Girls in Northfield, Mass. She later attended Pomona College in California and graduated from Columbia Presbyterian School of Nursing in New York City. She worked as a registered nurse at Yale University Hospital and had also served with the Visiting Nurse’s Association in Guilford, Conn.
Margie then moved to Harvard, where she raised her two children and became involved in local politics. She became President of the Harvard League of Women Voters. She went on to serve in several capacities with the League; she served on the board and also became President of the Massachusetts State League of Women Voters.
Margie had also worked as a real estate agent in South Carolina prior to moving to Bath, Maine, with her husband, Arthur Dean Bliss, in 1999. She and her husband were both instrumental in the preservation of the Zorach Fountain, “The Spirit of the Sea,” in Bath.
Her husband died in 2004.
She was a member of the Bath Garden Club and the Bath Library.
She moved to Brunswick in 2005 and was a member of First Parish Church, Curtis Memorial Library, and Friends of Bowdoin. She was known for cooking fabulous dinners for family, friends and neighbors, had a passion for art, and was an avid reader.
Besides her husband, she is predeceased by a granddaughter, Millie.
Surviving are her son, Jim Bliss, and his wife, Joyce, and their two sons of St. Louis, Mo.; her daughter, Katherine Bliss, and her partner, Patricia Keighley of Norton, Mass., and their 5 daughters; two sisters, Josephine Roberts, of Charlottesville, Virginia, and Mary Anne Gross of Chapel Hill, N.C.; and several nieces and nephews.
In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory can be made to the Friends of the Zorach Fountain, Box 846, Bath, ME 04530.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 1, at First Parish Church, Brunswick, Maine.
