Marjorie Esther Rice

Marjorie was the Grand Marshall 4th of July Parade 2003

Marjorie Esther Rice died on August 21, 2009 on Chebeague Island.  She was 95.

Marjorie was born on June 6, 1914 in Boston, MA.  She was the eldest daughter of Stanley M. Rice and Elizabeth Brown Rice.  Carrie Soule of Yarmouth, ME was her grandmother.  She grew up in Augusta and Rumford until moving to Long Island, NY because of the Great Depression.  She graduated from South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York in 1933.  She then went on to Nursing School. 

Marjorie joined the U.S. Army in 1943 as a 2nd Lieutenant.  She was assigned to the Fourth Auxiliary Surgical Group attached to the 3rd Army, commanded by General George Patton.  Marjorie served as a head surgical nurse in a unit specializing in chest and belly wounds.

After joining the Army, Marjorie was sent to England.  Her next assignment was Normandy, where she went ashore a few days after the June 6, 1944 D-day invasion, her 30th birthday.  She spent her first night in France sleeping in a foxhole with big balloons overhead to protect her and a fellow nurse from strafing. 

Marjorie then moved with Patton’s Army across Europe to Bastogne where the German siege was broken.  As the war was coming to an end, Marjorie was one of 10 nurses captured and held by the German Army for 9 hours.  The 5th Army liberated her.  After the war, she was stationed at a hospital in Framingham, MA where she worked until being discharged in 1948 as a Captain. 

Marjorie gave up nursing and went to the University of Massachusetts where she obtained a degree in Biology.  She then worked as a food inspector for the U.S. Department of Agriculture until her retirement in the mid 1970s to Chebeague Island.  Marjorie was an active member of the Chebeague community for many years.  She was also an avid reader of murder mysteries. A few months after the 2007 Patriots Day Storm, Marjorie moved to her final home, the Island Commons, where she lived for more than 2 years. 

She is survived by her son Peter of Chebeague Island, her grandson Fulton of Amherst, MA and her grand-nephew Jonathan Roy of Hamden, CT and his wife Ellen, their son Jackson Joseph and Jonathan’s daughter Bp.rittany.  She is also survived by her brother Maurice (Sonny) of Conroe, TX and his sons, Stanley T. (Bunky) also of Conroe, TX, Randall of Roxbury, MA and Michael who lives in North Carolina.  Her niece Marjorie Murnam of Pasadena, CA, also survives her.  Her sister Nancy Plummer of Hamden, CT predeceased her.