Bayville's Gladys Mack, historian, dies

Longtime Bayville resident Gladys Mack was an avid collector, fastidious organizer and passionate chronicler of local lore -- all of which made her a natural choice to help create the community museum and serve as village historian for three decades.

"The history of Bayville was her passion, but she liked history in general," former Mayor Victoria Siegel said of Mack, who died March 8 at age 91 at the Maine General Rehabilitation & Nursing at Glenridge facility in Augusta, Maine.

Mack, who served as Bayville historian from 1970 to 2000, and a friend persuaded then-Mayor Duncan Sterling Jr. of the need to encapsulate the village's history, so the trio founded the Bayville Historical Museum in 1973, Siegel said. She also founded the Bayville Historical Society, which is no longer active.

"She was an avid collector as long as I can remember," said her daughter, Pam Mack Cabanas of Friendship, Maine. "Her teddy bears number over 300. Her Santa Claus collection has over 600 cataloged pieces." She also collected shells, stamps, coins, cloisonné, ceramic hands, elephants, chocolate molds and miniature staplers she accumulated for her grandson, Eli Cabanas of Astoria.

"She was super-organized," Cabanas said. "At the museum, everything was annotated perfectly." After her mother died, she said she found an envelope containing not only her Social Security card but also the original pamphlet that came with it and the envelope they were mailed in. "That kind of says a lot about my mother," she said.

Gladys Parr was born in Central Falls, R.I., and moved with her family to Auburn, N.Y., where she graduated from Auburn High School, and then to Jersey City. She studied art at New York University, where she met her future husband of 66 years, and World War II ended her studies. In 1945, she married Joseph Elias Mack, then a captain in the Marines. After the war, she helped make ends meet painting children's portraits in Prospect Park near the couple's apartment in Brooklyn.

The family moved to Bayville about 1954. Mack was active in the Village Church, where she started and taught in the preschool, her daughter said. She also helped design and construct the current church building.

After suffering a stroke in 2000 and then losing most of her eyesight to macular degeneration, Mack and her husband in 2006 left Bayville for assisted living in Rockland, Maine. Despite her poor health, she had continued working on a book about the history of Bayville that her daughter hopes to have published as her legacy.

A memorial service and temporary museum exhibit about Mack, who was cremated, are being planned at the Bayville municipal complex for the spring.