Obituary

Mary Beth Manning, 74, died April 20, 2020, her daughter, Kate, by her side.

 

Born August 23, 1945, to Paul and Margaret (Boyd) Bowers, Mary Beth grew up in Cortland, Ohio, with the exception of a year spent on U.S. Naval Base Guam, where her father was stationed and where she attended first grade. She played the flute in her high school band, and went on to attend The College of Wooster and Case Western Reserve, receiving a Bachelor of Science in nursing in 1968. That same year she married Charles R. Manning, whom she had met in band, and the couple set up residence in Lawrence, Kansas, for a year before setting off for the California Bay Area in 1969. Their daughter was born in 1974, and they divorced in 1977.

 

Mary Beth was so impressed by her delivery experience at Stanford Hospital that she returned to work there as a labor and delivery nurse for nearly 20 years. She eventually earned a master’s degree in health services administration in 1988, but much preferred hands-on nursing to management. After leaving Stanford in 1993, Mary Beth continued working as an RN at Planned Parenthood in Watsonville, California, until she moved to the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts in 2002 to be closer to her daughter. She was employed as a nurse at the Holyoke Health Center until her retirement in 2010.