Muriel McCleave, longtime nurse who helped new moms, dies at 95

Muriel Ellen McCleave found joy in teaching mothers how to be mothers.

The longtime Bay Shore and North Babylon resident spent nearly her entire adult life as a nurse, working in the field until she was 85. Among her various and wide-ranging duties were visits to new mothers in their homes, guiding them through the introductory days of motherhood.

“Some of the mothers needed help with nursing,” said daughter Barbara McCleave of Huntington. “That’s not as natural as people think. … She was a born teacher. She enjoyed being in charge [and] helped a lot of people.”

Muriel McCleave, a mother of two who lived in North Babylon for 30 years before spending her last two years at Carillon Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Huntington, died shortly after 9 a.m. on Dec. 24 at Huntington Hospital after a battle with various ailments, her family said. She was 95.

Born April 3, 1927, in Manhattan, McCleave grew up in Brooklyn and graduated from Erasmus Hall High School. She went to nursing school at Adelphi for free, thanks to the Cadet Nurse Corps, a nurse training program organized by the government during World War II.

By the time McCleave left the program, the war had ended and she began a career that would eventually take her across the country.

While raising her two children in Bay Shore, McCleave worked as a private-duty nurse, focusing on female surgical patients and hospice care. She also had a stint at South Side Hospital in Bay Shore.

Throughout her career, McCleave was a trusted voice around doctors and patients.

“She enjoyed a really good reputation,” her daughter said. “Doctors put a lot of [stock] in her advice and her expertise about her patients. She was very into getting people up after surgery and getting them out of the hospital.”

“She paid attention to people,” said son-in-law Gregory Long, an editor in the Newsday sports department. “She was very good at telling you, ‘This is what you need to do now.’ I think that’s what made her a good nurse. She was always saying, ‘Make sure you get your rest, drink lots of water,’ things like that. I think when she said that, she said it with such authority that you said, ‘She’s probably right.’”

When her children became adults, McCleave drove cross-country by herself and settled in California, where she lived for nearly five years in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

She got a nursing job at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, working as a labor and delivery nurse and often helping with the birth of celebrities’ children, including actors Jaclyn Smith ("Charlie’s Angels") and Bradley Whitford ("The West Wing"), her daughter said.    

“She said [Smith] was the most beautiful woman she had seen in her life, even through childbirth,” said McCleave’s daughter.

In addition her daughter, Muriel McCleave is survived by sister Alice McMorrow of Massachusetts. She is predeceased by her son Dennis McCleave.

Muriel McCleave's remains were cremated and a ceremony at sea will be held this summer, her daughter said.