Mary Louise Harrington Bagley – Military Spouse

From a contemporary press report:

Age 98, the widow and mother of Navy admirals, died of heart ailments Sept 15, 1993 at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California.

From shortly after her marriage in 1918 to David Worth Bagley, then a Lieutenant Commander, until his retirement to California in the late 1940s as a full Admiral, Mrs Bagley regarded Washington as her home. She also accompanied her husband on assignments to France and elsewhere.

During World War II, she was a Red Cross Gray Lady in Naval hospitals. She also was a volunteer with the Navy Relief Society. She attended St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Washington.

She and Admiral Bagley had three sons. The eldest, David Harrington Bagley, retired from the Navy as an Admiral and lived in Vienna until his death in 1992. Surviving are retired Admiral Worth H. Bagley of La Jolla and Tennent H. Bagley of Brussels, Belgium; 12 grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.

A resident of La Jolla at the time of her death, Mrs. Bagley was born into a banking family in Colusa, California. She was a niece of Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, who was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s personal chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during World War II. Mrs. Bagley was a survivor of both the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, that brought the United States into World War II.

Michael Robert Patterson

Michael Robert Patterson was born in Arlington and is the son of a former officer of the US Army. So it was no wonder that sooner or later his interests drew him to American history and especially to American military history. Many of his articles can be found on renowned portals like the New York Times, Washingtonpost or Wikipedia.

Reviewed by: Michael Howard