Harriet G. Gearhart, a homemaker who earlier had worked in the actuarial department of an insurance company, died Thursday at the Blakehurst retirement community in Towson of complications from Alzheimer's disease. She was 90.
The daughter of Edward Roane Willcox, a lawyer, and Rosalie Shreve Willcox, a businesswoman, Harriet Gale Willcox was born and raised in Norfolk, Va.
After graduating in 1942 from Miss Turnbull's School in Norfolk, she earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1946 from Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Va.
She was working in the actuarial department of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. in New York City, when she met and fell in love with David Franklin Gearhart, who was studying at General Theological Seminary.
The couple married in 1951, and the following year, Mr. Gearhart earned his degree in theology from Virginia Seminary in Alexandria, Va., and was ordained an Episcopal priest.
Mr. Gearhart pastored parishes in Pennsylvania and on the Eastern Shore before coming in 1965 to the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Ruxton.
Mrs. Gearhart's son, David Tyler Gearhart, who lives in Roland Park, said his mother was especially well suited to life as the wife of a clergyman because of her "Southern charm and social graces."
"My mother had a joyful spirit, a beautiful smile and touched a lot of hearts," he said.
Mrs. Gearhart's love of the beach dated to her youth, when she spent summers at the Plimhimmon Hotel in Ocean City, which her great-grandmother built in 1884, and later at a cottage in South Bethany Beach, Del., that her mother owned.
After her husband's retirement in 1984, the couple moved to Centreville, Queen Anne's County, where they lived until moving to Blakehurst in 2002.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Dec. 13 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Carrollton and Boyce avenues, Ruxton.
In addition to her son, Mrs. Gearhart is survived by three daughters, Sarah Tilghman Gearhart and Mary Claiborne Gearhart, both of Baltimore, and Rosalie Shreve Gearhart of Mill Valley, Calif.; and five grandchildren.