Margaret W. Fowler, a World War II nurse who later edited a pair of literary anthologies, died Wednesday of Parkinson's disease at the Broadmead retirement community. She was 87.

Margaret Williamson, whose father owned Veneers LLC in Cockeysville and whose mother was an educator, was born in Baltimore and raised in Towson.

She was a 1940 graduate of Bryn Mawr School and earned a bachelor's degree in English literature in 1945 from Wellesley College.

Mrs. Fowler served as a Red Cross nurse in the Philippines and Japan near the end of World War II. While serving in Japan, she met Army Lt. James Randlett Fowler. They married in 1947.

Mr. Fowler, who was a career diplomat with the U.S. Agency for International Development, died in 1977.

In 1978, after her children were grown, Mrs. Fowler earned a master's degree in women's studies, with an emphasis on literature and aging, from George Washington University.

Mrs. Fowler co-edited "Songs of Experience: An Anthology of Literature on Growing Old" with Priscilla McCutcheon in 1991 and "Love in Full Bloom: The Many Faces of Love in the Golden Years" in 1994.

A world traveler, Mrs. Fowler was also an avid reader. She had homes in Chevy Chase and Gibson Island.

Services for Mrs.Fowler will be held at 1 p.m. Tuesday at St. Christopher by the Sea Church on Gibson Island.

Surviving are a son, Michael R. Fowler of English, Ind.; two daughters, Deborah F. Hudson of Baltimore and Pamela L. Fowler of Chevy Chase; and 11 grandchildren.