Margaret Elinor Paine, 96

MEREDITH — Margaret Elinor Paine, 96, of 17 Lake Country Road, died peacefully on Aug. 5, 2019, at Forestview Manor.

Margaret was born on Jan. 17, 1923, in Ottawa, Canada, daughter of a firefighter, Carlton C. Dunning, and his wife, Marion Robertson McQueen Cochran Dunning. She was one of eight children and, at age 18, joined the Royal British Navy as a Wren, and was one of three women transported to Scotland by submarine during World War II, where she was stationed. There she met her future husband, Louis H. Paine, a pharmacist mate in the U.S. Navy, at a dance.

After the war, in 1946, she married and moved to Grafton, Massachusetts, and started a family. While raising her four children, she felt compelled to fight and raise money for causes she deemed unjust. An example: In the mid-1950s, although not eligible to vote herself, she started the first League of Women Voters in Massachusetts.

In the 1960s, she moved to Sherborn, Massachusetts. While looking for art work to decorate her new home, she would often remark, “I can do better,” so she took up painting and became an artist and did much better.

In the 1970s, she took up the piano and went back to school. She took a course at a small community college and ended up teaching the course the second year. The third year, she was offered jobs at many Boston hospitals and thus began a career in the medical profession that lasted 35-plus years.

Margaret worked at the New England Baptist Hospital, in the OR. As an OR tech, she developed and taught a lifesaving procedure taht is still practiced in most hospitals today.

During those years, she was the director for the Sherborn Players, a local theatre group. She sang in the Pilgrim Church Choir and in the World Choir in Austria. She traveled extensively around the world with her church group, family and friends and vacationed on the lake and at the ocean. "Mag," as her Canadian family called her, loved to have her visit, where everyone shared a good laugh over who could yodel or arm wrestle the best.

She looked and acted much younger than her years and, since she would never tell anyone her age, finally retired at 85.

In 2010, Margaret moved to Meredith to live near her family and continued to entertain all who met her with her funny stories and, as always, left them with a chuckle or two and a big smile on their face.

What I hope you take away from reading this is how much our mother loved her family and was loved. She never stopped learning, enjoyed people and living life.

Margaret is survived by a son, Adam Paine; daughters Cheryl Groen, Martha Billings, and Amy Paine; seven grandchildren, James, Rich, Lisa, Brew, Doug, William, and Daniel; three great-grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews.

In addition to her parents, she was predeceased by her husband, Louis H. Paine; grandson Tom; brothers Gary, Bunny and Ray; and by her sisters, Grace, Marion, Dodie, and Helen.

There will be no calling hours or services.

For those who wish, the family suggests that memorial donations be made to Lakes Region Visiting Nurses Association, 186 Waukewan St., Meredith, NH 03253.

Wilkinson-Beane-Simoneau-Paquette Funeral Home & Cremation Services, 164 Pleasant St., Laconia, is assisting the family with the arrangements. For more information and to view an online memorial, go to www.wilkinsonbeane.com.