By Jonann Brady
When she joined the Army in 1942, she supervised a psychiatric ward in a military hospital in New Orleans. She picked up hitchhikers, kept up a courtship by mail during World War II for over two years, and organized a polio vaccination effort in the Baldwin schools. Along the way, she raised five children and made her mark on all who met her.
"Everywhere she went we could see the admiration other people had for her," said her son, B.A. Schoen of Baldwin. "It was empowering for we children."
After a long illness, Margaret Schoen died Jan. 1 at her home in Baldwin. She was 88 years old.
Born Margaret Donovan and raised in Minnesota, she attended college, and after a stint as a traveling nurse, joined the Army in order to do her part for the county.
At an Army hospital in New Orleans, she met Gerard Schoen of Baldwin. The two dated for a few short weeks before he was shipped off to the Pacific theater as a combat medic. In a plot twist straight from the movies, the two kept up a "correspondence courtship," exchanging letters and photographs for two-and-a-half years.
She lost her brother in the war, and constantly worried about the fate of her overseas love, according to her son, but in 1945, Gerard returned to the states, suffering from malaria and jungle rot, a skin condition. The two were married shortly afterward and moved to Baldwin to raise a family.
Schoen became a stay-at-home mom for a time, but her son remembers her as not quite like the other 1950s mothers.
"She lived with an absence of fear," said Schoen. "As a kid in the '50s, I knew lots of moms who didn't drive; she drove her own car cross country....She used to pick up hitchhikers. She did that all the time."
Schoen, who had five children five years apart, became involved in the PTA, and later, the Baldwin Historical Society and the Women's Advance Club, which honored her in a ceremony last April.
In the 1960s, she returned to nursing after a decade-long hiatus, working at South Nassau Communities Hospital, Mercy Medical Center, the Nassau County Department of Health and an East Meadow nursing home. After her "official" retirement, she still worked as a substitute nurse in the Baldwin School District and helped to organize the first polio vaccination efforts in the school.
"That was like her second war," said Schoen.
After her husband passed away in 1984, Schoen stayed active in the community and traveled extensively, often alone, to far-away places like Italy and Asia.
"She was a lot of fun," said Schoen. "She enjoyed a joke and it didn't matter if it was at her expense. She was little redheaded ball of fire."
Schoen leaves behind her children Thomas of Saipan, B.A. of Baldwin, Daniel of Colfax, Calif., Jane Lance of Charlotte, N.C., Elizabeth Benjamin of Pearl River, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Funeral services were held at Fullerton Funeral Home in Baldwin. Donations can be sent to the WWII Memorial Campaign, P.O. Box 96766, Washington, D.C. 20090.
