Bridget O. Toner dead; former nurse turned lawyer was 83

Bridget O. Toner, a former hospital administrator turned lawyer, died Wednesday at her Bay Shore home. She was 83.

In her 50s, a time in life when others are planning their retirement, Toner was working on a second career, said her daughter, Mary A. Toner, an attorney from Bay Shore.

“She always admired the law,” her daughter said.

When Mary Toner was studying for her Law School Admission Test in the mid-1980s, her mom asked to look at the prep material, and announced she, too, would take the LSAT.

“Just to see how I would do,” Mary Toner remembered her mom saying.

Toner did well enough to be admitted to Touro Law Center in Central Islip. She attended classes in the evening and, during the day, worked at Southside Hospital in Bay Shore as manager of quality assurance, her family said.

Patrick Toner, an attorney from Bay Shore, said that when he met his mother at the hospital for lunch, everyone knew her.

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“Hello Bridget. Hi Bridget. People greeted her all the way up and down the hall,” he recalled.

Born in County Mayo, Ireland, on June 9, 1932, Toner received her nursing degree at a school in Coventry, England. She immigrated to the United States in 1956 and married two years later. Toner, her husband and their four children moved to Commack in 1965.

Toner worked as a nurse at Southside Hospital. In the late 1970s, she joined St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Smithtown, and became its director of nursing. Several years later, she returned to work at Southside Hospital as its quality assurance manager. She quit in 1988 when she earned her law degree and started her legal career.

“Bridget never stopped learning. She was a teacher. She always shared her knowledge,” said Marian Cleary of Riverhead, a friend and former colleague. “It was a great loss to the hospital when she started practicing law.”

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“I’ll miss her,” said Cleary, who cried Friday when she remembered Toner. “She was a sweet lady.”

In 1991, Toner joined her daughter’s law firm in Bay Shore, and became the mother half of Toner & Toner. She specialized in personal injury cases. Toner retired in 2004, eight years after she was diagnosed with uterine cancer, said her family. She spent the last years of her life tending to her garden and going to church, a promise Toner made to a priest when she was diagnosed with cancer in 1996.

“She went to church until she couldn’t go anymore,” her son said.

In addition to her daughter and son, survivors are a sister, Mary Bradley of Coventry, England; a son, John M. Toner of Babylon; a daughter, Claire Beauparlant of Los Alamos, New Mexico; three grandsons; and one granddaughter.

A private ceremony is scheduled for Sunday. Toner’s body is to be cremated.