Obit For Maplewood Native Reads Like Love Letter To Her NJ Towns

MAPLEWOOD, NJ — Everyone who passes away has a long history of people they touched, sometimes just for a few moments. A recent obituary for a graduate of Columbia High School in Maplewood tells of someone who took delight in everyone she met, and in every small New Jersey town where she met them.

Anne Marie McMains was born in 1936 in Los Angeles, to Herbert Louis Walthart and Mary Helen Van Vleet. The Waltharts moved from Alhambra to Maplewood, N.J. in 1948, taking a train cross-country with memorable stops along the way, including Union Station in Chicago, according to her recent obituary (McMains passed away on Jan. 29.)

"Anne graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood in 1954," reads her obituary on Madison Patch, "and attended Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, where she earned a bachelor's in history in 1958 and made lifelong friends." Mos trecently, McMains lived in Madison and "befriended shopkeepers, restaurant owners and bank tellers there and in neighboring Chatham" including at the library and Laundromat.

McMains leaves behind family in North Jersey and around the country. Read more about McMains here.

And if you have an obit to submit in Maplewood, email caren.lissner@patch.com (if it includes a photo, you must include express permission from the original photographer or copyright holder to use it).

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Josh Bakan contributed reporting to this story.

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