Daisy Wood Troxell, a woman whose newly discovered artistic talent was displayed in a one-woman show on her 100th birthday, died Saturday of heart failure at Fairhaven retirement community in Sykesville. She was 105.

Mrs. Troxell was drafted into service at a Baltimore hospital during the influenza epidemic of 1918. She was a social worker in the inner city before her marriage, started a second career at the Johns Hopkins University library after she became a widow in 1948 and took up drawing at the age of 92.

Her life was "remarkable not only for its length but for its quality," said her 73-year-old son Richard K. Troxell, a retiree living in Weston, Conn. "She was a very optimistic person and had a generally sunny outlook on life. I think that's one of the things that carried her through."

Daisy Wood was born on April Fool's Day in 1897 in Honesdale, Pa., and moved with her family to Roland Park in Baltimore in 1910. She graduated from Friends School in 1915 and Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., in 1919. She was believed to be the oldest living alumna of both institutions.

In 1918, when she was a senior in college, her brother Walter, an Army officer, was expected to be sent to serve overseas. So Mrs. Troxell received permission from the school to come home to Baltimore to see him off.

It was the height of the flu epidemic, and when she arrived by train she saw coffins piled at Pennsylvania Station in rows four and five deep. Her sister Janet had become ill, and Mrs. Troxell was quickly recruited to work at the hospital where Janet was being treated -- family members believe it was Franklin Square Hospital -- because the staff was so severely hit by the sickness.

Mrs. Troxell helped with a variety of chores -- from assisting with the birth of a baby to assisting a surgery for a boy with rickets.

After she graduated from college, she became a social worker for the state, working mostly with poor families in the city.

"It was a rewarding experience, for all those families to allow me to be a part of helping make their lives better," she told Friends' alumni magazine in this year's spring issue.

She left social work in 1923, when she married Willard W. Troxell, an engineer, and they moved to the Windsor Hills neighborhood.

She spent the next 25 years as a wife, mother and homemaker. In 1948, her daughter Anne left home to get married, her son left home for college and her husband died. The next year, she opened another chapter of her life and began working at the Johns Hopkins University library on the Homewood campus. She worked in the bindery and did many administrative jobs before she retired in 1965.

She moved to Fairhaven in 1988, where she took up art four years later.

During the next decade, Mrs. Troxell produced a large volume of oil-pastel paintings of birds, animals and landscapes that she gave to her friends and family. On her 100th birthday, in 1997, Fairhaven put on an exhibit of her art -- a one-woman show attended by five generations of her family.

"By the time you are 92, you are supposed to be finished, but I thought, 'There is something I have got to do,'" Mrs. Troxell said in a 1997 interview. "I found out I could draw."

Ruth E. Dodge, who for many years coordinated art exhibits at Fairhaven, said: "She swore that she never had any [artistic] training, but I never could believe that."

A memorial service will be held at Fairhaven next month. Details are being planned.

In addition to her son, Mrs. Troxell is survived by a sister, Hildegarde W. Dell of Annapolis; five grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandson.