Marie Isabelle Ewing, who witnessed the coming of World War II in Germany and later settled in Baltimore, died of a blood clot Jan. 3 at the Broadmead retirement community in Cockeysville. The former Homeland resident was 92.
Born Marie Isabelle vom Rath in Berne, Switzerland, she was the daughter of an American mother and a German father, who was a lieutenant in the German army during World War I. As an infant, she lived through the war with her mother and grandparents in Frankfurt, Germany.
After the war, her father was hired by the General Aniline and Film Corp. in New York City. The family moved to Glen Cove on Long Island, N.Y. She and her sisters were sent to schools in Switzerland, Rome and Paris, which she described in a memoir as a "three-month stay to learn about the French way of life, language, the arts and sightseeing."
Mrs. Ewing reflected that "then, at last, we went to a good school in Arundel, England, for two or three years and summered in Germany with our wonderful grandparents and other family members. We skied in Austria and Bavaria - yet we always returned to Kronberg im Taunus, our grandparent's lovely estate."
She also vividly recalled the rise of Adolf Hitler.
"Everything changed," she wrote. "Whisperings, secrets, rationing, uniforms suddenly were everywhere. Things were happening that I didn't understand. When I went home to Kronberg - wow - strange new servants. Nazis had taken over - the faithful others were all gone.
"Our grandmother in low tones warned us not to question the changes," she wrote. "The [war] preparations were beginning - children in uniforms, marching and singing Nazi songs; burning books; yellow J's on shop windows for 'Jew.' Hatred seeping in everywhere and loudspeakers with Hitler's voice urging us to hate all but Nazis."
She wrote that she faced conscription into military service. "After a few more days, I left for home, Long Island, never to see my beloved family, grandparents and some dear cousins, who all died in the war."
She boarded a steamship whose portholes were blacked out and crossed the Atlantic. While in Washington, D.C., she met her future husband, Sherley Ewing, a Yale graduate who soon joined the Navy and worked in intelligence training.
"She was a very handsome woman who resembled the actress Hedy Lamarr when she married Sherley," said a friend, Barbara "Bunny" Hathaway of Owings Mills. "She had a wonderful sense of humor."
In her memoir, she wrote that her German ancestry had implications during World War II. She wrote that while shopping for groceries in a military commissary, she filled out a form that asked the citizenship of her parents.
"Revealing my maiden name put us into deep trouble since it was German," she wrote. "When Sherley finished his training he received his diploma, opening it and found it empty. Why? Because of my German background! Thereafter for a week or so we remained in our quarters guarded by the Navy shore patrol."
Her husband, a lieutenant commander, was eventually assigned to duty in the Russell Islands in the Pacific.
The couple moved to Baltimore in 1947 and lived in Brooklandville, Timonium and Homeland. Her husband was Maryland's civil defense director for many years.
"She was almost regal," said a friend, Pamela Lloyd Slingluff. "In her outlook, she was rather a throwback to another time when things were more gracious."
Mrs. Ewing was an active member of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and for many years helped to count the weekly collections. She also worked for 20 years at a Towson women's shop, the Clothes Line, and was a member of the Garden Club of Twenty.
Mrs. Ewing moved to Broadmead in 2001, where she read parts in plays and served on numerous committees.
"She was a gifted raconteur who could transform a mundane event into an adventure," said a daughter-in-law, Lynn Lockwood of Harpswell, Maine. "She also had a deep appreciation for the natural world, and was an avid gardener and supporter of causes benefiting animals.
Friends said Mrs. Ewing took pleasure in performing small acts of kindness for others in the retirement community.
"She always had such beautiful posture," said another friend, Nancy Boyce, who lives in Cockeysville. "And she was fun to listen to."
During her last stay in the Broadmead infirmary, she noted that her room was lacking in something to lift the spirits. She created a petition in verse asking that resident artists contribute to decorate the infirmary with their work. On her final day in the infirmary, that petition was being circulated through the building.
A funeral Mass was offered Saturday at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Cockeysville.
Survivors include two sons, Michael Ewing of Baltimore and William Ewing of Harpswell; a daughter, Betty Ewing of White Marsh; a sister, Eleanor Childs of Cockeysville; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Her husband of 46 years died in 1988. Another son, Sherley Ewing II, died in 1971.