Ethel L. Mann, a retired secretary and former Owings Mills resident, died Friday of heart failure at a Jasper, Ind., nursing center. She was 88.

Ethel L. Widerman was born in Baltimore and raised in the Pimlico neighborhood. She was a 1937 graduate of Forest Park High School.

During the 1950s, Mrs. Mann was a secretary at the Maryland Historical Society, before taking a job in 1962 at Burns & Russell Co., a Baltimore manufacturer of building materials. She retired in 1984.

Mrs. Mann lived for many years in Mount Washington before moving to Owings Mills, where she was a member of Pleasant Hills United Methodist Church. She moved to Jasper in 2003.

She had been a volunteer with the Board of Childcare, a nonprofit social-services organization in Randallstown.

"She also volunteered with Sykes Toy Project that collected and distributed toys to needy children," said her daughter, Sharon L. Durcholz of Jasper.

In Jasper, Mrs. Mann was a member of the Dubois County Museum and volunteered with the Red Cross and the American Cancer Society.

Her husband of 20 years, Thomas Mann, who had been a bartender at the Owl Bar in the Belvedere Hotel, died in 1988.

Mrs. Mann was a member of Shiloh United Methodist Church in Jasper, where services were held yesterday.

Also surviving are a sister, Jane Aaron of Linthicum; and two grandsons. A marriage to Shamus O'Shea ended in divorce.