Dorothy Elaine Mahan
Retired cemetery bookkeeper who was white-collar Rosie the Riveter in World War II remained active through her 90s
Dorothy Elaine Mahan, a retired cemetery bookkeeper who during World War II was a white-collar Rosie the Riveter, died of respiratory failure April 7 at The Palms at Port St. Lucie, a nursing home in Florida. She was 97 and formerly lived in Hebbville in Baltimore County.
Born in Cumberland, she was the daughter of Fausten Guardian May, a homebuilder, and Lillian Cecelia May. She attended Cumberland schools and moved to Baltimore with her family at the beginning of World War II, initially living on Crossland Avenue in Mayfield in Northeast Baltimore.
“She had to abandon further schooling in order to take a job to help out, in spite of having high student grades in her junior high school,” said her son Mark C. Mahan.
As a young woman, she went to work at the front desk of the Lord Baltimore Hotel.
After a year she joined the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company in Middle River, working the third shift, midnight to 8 a.m.
“She used her beautiful mind for math, she checked the work of sleep-deprived estimators who built the Martin B-26 Marauder bombers for fighting,” her son said. “She was the office worker version of Rosie the Riveter,” he said, referring to the female character popularized during World War II who worked in factory jobs usually held by men who were serving in the military.
She later worked at the desk of an exercise room at the Ambassador Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She was voted a runner-up in the Miss Margate beauty contest in Margate City, New Jersey.
“She befriended two visiting children of a separated wealthy New York couple. The children’s father convinced her to come with them and to a home on Riverside Drive,” her son said. “She took the children on bike rides along the Hudson River and outings with their mom, who kept her small plane near the George Washington Bridge.”
After a year in New York, she returned to Baltimore and the Lord Baltimore Hotel. One day she spontaneously attended a basketball game with an acquaintance, where she met her future husband, Donald Mahan, who served in the Army Air Corps aboard a crash rescue boat.
After their wedding, they lived in an apartment near the Johns Hopkins University.
They moved to Ocean City while her husband managed Rick’s Raft nightclub. She hired the staff and helped run the operation alongside Mr. Mahan.
After several years they returned to Baltimore and settled on Elmore Avenue in Baltimore County. She raised two sons and was active in the Hebbville Elementary, Woodlawn Junior High and Milford Mill Senior High PTAs.
She was treasurer of the Baltimore County Police Community Relations Council on Windsor Mill Road and a member of Prince of Peace Episcopal Church.
She went on to manage a gift store, the Stem N’ Wick in the Security Square Mall, in the 1970s.
“My mother was excellent at figures and could have easily run her own business,” said her son.
She went on to be the bookkeeper for the Woodlawn Cemetery.
“It was an ideal job that capitalized on my mother’s mathematical acumen. She handled the finances,” said her son. “She also loved watching the swans glide on the cemetery’s lake.”
She retired nearly 35 years ago and lived in an Ocean City beach home.
“On her long beach walks she found it would have been nice to know how far you’d walked, and my mother recommended to the municipal authorities to have the street stenciled on signs,” her son said. “They complied.”
The couple moved to Indiantown, Florida, in the 1990s.
She made friends and was elected to the Indianwood Community Association board. She also got local authorities to add Indiantown signs to community way points .
Through her 90s Mrs. Mahan kept active and played on a bocce team. She enjoyed games of cards and won more often than not at mahjong.
Survivors include her sons, Jeffrey S. Mahan of Annapolis and Mark C. Mahan of Arnold; her sister, Patricia Sekler of Cambridge, Massachusetts; and three grandsons. Her husband of 54 years, Donald C. Mahan, a homebuilder who owned Ocean City’s Blue Bayou Restaurant, died in 2006.
A service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Episcopal Church of the Advent at 4484 Southwest Citrus Blvd. in Palm City, Florida, where she was a member.