Lucy B. Henson, a retired Carroll County Bank and Trust Co. official who earlier had worked for Maryland National Bank, died Jan. 17 of myelodysplastic anemia at her Timonium home.
She was 84.
Lusitania Benedetto, daughter of Italian immigrant tailors, was born and raised in Wilmington, Del.
After graduating from Wilmington High School in 1944, she began her college studies at George Washington University.
Deciding she wanted to become a teacher, she transferred to Wilson Teachers College, now the University of the District of Columbia, where she earned her bachelor's degree in 1950.
She was married in 1949 to Edwin Henson and earned her law degree in 1953 from George Washington University Law School.
Mrs. Henson did additional graduate work at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and University of Miami Law School.
"She graduated law school in 1953 with her husband and they were the first married couple to graduate from the law school," said their daughter, Tracey H. Ford, director of development at Towson University and a Towson resident.
The couple both passed the District of Columbia Bar exam in 1954, which prompted a headline in the Washington Evening Star: "A woman named for a ship and her husband were among 298 passing the June Bar examination."
Mrs. Henson, who had been named after the Cunard liner that had been sunk off Ireland by a German U-boat in 1915, had her name legally changed from Lusitania to Lucy, her daughter said.
She established a three-woman law firm in Washington and, in 1958, moved to Delaware, where she passed the Delaware Bar. A year later, she went to work in the trust department of the Bank of Delaware.
In 1963, she joined the trust department of Equitable Trust Co. in Baltimore, and three years later went to work in a similar capacity for Maryland National Bank.
She was named the bank's first female vice president in 1971 and became manager of the trust department in 1975.
From 1981 until retiring in 1991, Mrs. Henson was vice president of new trust business at Carroll County Bank and Trust Co.
In addition to her professional career, Mrs. Henson taught business law for 18 years at the Weekend College of Notre Dame of Maryland.
She had been president of the Baltimore chapter of the National Association of Bank Women, and a member of the Baltimore Association of Tax Lawyers and the Baltimore Estate Planning Council.
Mrs. Henson had been a trustee of Good Samaritan Hospital and the President's Council of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, and a member of the advisory boards of the Salvation Army, Community College of Baltimore, and Maryland Province of the Jesuits.
She was a charter member of the Center Club.
"She was quite a trailblazer," Ms. Ford said.
Mrs. Henson enjoyed volunteer work, reading, traveling, cooking and entertaining.
She was a communicant of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, 101 Church Lane, Cockeysville, where a Mass of Christian burial was offered Saturday.
In addition to her husband, a retired tax attorney, and daughter, Mrs. Henson is survived by two grandchildren.