Adalee R. Hasson, a retired department store supervisor who earned a college degree when she was 70, died Jan. 1 of dementia at a nursing home in Cooperstown, N.Y.
The longtime Parkville resident, who celebrated her birthday Christmas Eve, was 85.
Adalee Ritz was born at home on Federal Street in Baltimore. She was raised in Overlea and graduated in 1942 from the Institute of Notre Dame. She was also a graduate of Strayer Business College.
During the 1940s, she worked as an accounting clerk for the Social Security Administration, which was then in the Candler Building in downtown Baltimore.
In 1948, she married Samuel W. Hasson Jr., an industrial engineer who worked at Aberdeen Proving Ground. He died in 2005.
The couple settled in Parkville, where they raised their three children. In the 1960s, Mrs. Hasson returned to work at Stewart's department store on York Road in Rodgers Forge, eventually becoming supervisor of accessories. She retired in the early 1980s.
She was an accomplished watercolorist and seamstress who designed and made many of her clothes.
In 1995, when she was 70, she earned an associate's degree in art from what was then Essex Community College.
"It was a dream of hers to earn a degree," said a daughter, Maureen "Marcie" Schwartzman of Cooperstown.
Interested in the arts, Mrs. Hasson was a longtime subscriber to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Walters Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
She also enjoyed traveling to New York with another daughter to attend performances of the Metropolitan Opera Company at Lincoln Center.
A book lover, Mrs. Hasson was a member of a Great Books club for more than 40 years.
Mrs. Hasson was an active member of the IND Alumnae Association and had been honored as alumna of the year in 2001.She was a communicant and volunteer at Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church in Baynesville.
She also volunteered at Villa Assumpta, the School Sisters of Notre Dame motherhouse in the Woodbrook section of Baltimore County, where a Mass of Christian burial was offered Tuesday..
Also surviving is a son, Richard T. Hasson of Parkville; another daughter, Nancy Hasson of Bridgewater, N.J.; and six grandchildren.