Margaret M. Feeley, a homemaker, former businesswoman and longtime Eucharistic minister, died Tuesday of progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare brain disease, at Oak Crest Village retirement community in Parkville. She was 87.
Margaret Evans was born in Baltimore and raised on Guilford Avenue. After graduating from Mount St. Agnes High School in 1938, she attended what is now Towson University.
During World War II, she was a telephone operator for Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co.
In 1944, she married Jerome L. Feeley Jr., her teenage sweetheart, who was then a Navy bomber pilot.
The couple lived in Northwood before moving in 1953 to a home on Fernway Road in Cedarcroft, where they lived for 45 years and raised their five children.
After her children were grown, Mrs. Feeley joined her husband in his business, Feeley Kitchens Inc., a Baltimore custom kitchen design business he had established in 1974.
"She handled all of the accounting and worked there until 1988," said a daughter, Kathleen F. O'Hanlon of Parkville.
A devout Roman Catholic, Mrs. Feeley had been an active communicant of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen for years where she was a Eucharistic minister.
"She also distributed weekly Communion to residents of the nearby Long Green Nursing Home on Melrose Avenue," Mrs. O'Hanlon said.
Mrs. Feeley also volunteered at the Cathedral School, participated in church functions and was a member of the Mount St. Mary's College Women's Auxiliary.
In 1998, Mrs. Feeley and her husband moved to the Parkville retirement community.
"She was such a gracious lady and simply wonderful. She was a Eucharistic minister with us for years in our chapel and took Communion to those who were shut-ins in their apartments," said Sister Mary Danielle Murphy of the Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart, who works in Oak Crest's pastoral ministry.
"Church was a big part off her life, and she came to all of our special activities such as the Stations of the Cross and our Day of Reconciliation. Her faith life was very important to her."
Mrs. Feeley was a lifelong bridge player and was a member of clubs at the retirement community and the L'Hirondelle Club in Ruxton. She also was an avid duckpin bowler.
A Mass of Christian burial will be offered at 11 a.m. today in the retirement community's chapel, 8800 Walther Blvd.
In addition to her husband and daughter, survivors include two sons, Jerome L. Feeley III of Manhattan, Kan., and J. Patrick Feeley of Bozeman, Mont.; two other daughters, Mary Ellen Brennan of Hampstead and Sharon M. Cook of Lutherville; a brother, James S. Evans of Parkville; a sister, Sally Ann Lambert of Darlington; 16 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
fred.rasmussen@baltsun.com