Marcia Yeager, most recently of Warminster, Pennsylvania, passed away on March 18 after a brief illness.
Marcia, 86, was the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine who came to the United States to escape persecution and to find a better life. Her family instilled a commitment to improving the lives of others, a sense of humor, and a competitive spirit. Her parents, Irving and Augusta Fogel, both worked in the New York City public schools, her father as a shop teacher and her mother as a secretary.
Marcia was proud to be a native New Yorker. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manhattan – near her grandparents’ stationery store on 1st Avenue and 50th Street – she attended Hunter High School before her parents moved to Queens where she graduated from Forest Hills High School.
Marcia attended Cornell University, where she made lifelong friends as a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority. Graduating in 1958 with a Bachelor of Science degree, she followed graduation with a one year’s internship at what was then known as St. Luke’s Hospital in New York to become a registered dietitian. Marcia was a school lunch manager in Brooklyn when she started dating H. Robert Yeager, having been set up by mutual friends from Cornell. After a brief courtship they were married in September 1960. They moved to Newark, NJ, where she was assistant chief dietitian at Clara Maass Hospital. Within a year Marcia was offered a job at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center doing nitrogen balance studies on a panel of patients who were being treated with drugs that later became known as chemotherapy. In her spare time at New York Hospital, she assisted in surgical trials on heart transplant procedures. Marcia left New York Hospital for a job as chief dietitian at Drinx Plus, which was among the first companies to sell prepared food in vending machines, relying on a new gadget called a radar oven to heat the food. She worked there until she announced that she was pregnant and was promptly fired.
In 1965, with Bob’s architecture license in hand, they decided to move to the tiny village of Little York, in Hunterdon County, NJ, where Bob would establish his own firm and they would start a family. With no job between them, they bought a new car and a large converted grist mill. Their daughter, Holly, was born that spring, followed two years later by a son, Jordan.
In 1974 they moved to a historic house that was originally a hotel in the village of Uhlerstown, in Bucks County, PA, along the Delaware Canal. When she learned that the Frenchtown Elementary School was looking for a home economics teacher, she started teaching part time.
As the children grew she became the only registered dietitian in the New Jersey Department of Corrections and supervised the kitchen at the Correctional Institution for Women in Clinton that produced 5,000 meals a day. Over the years she also worked as a private practice dietitian assisting nursing home and other institutional living administrators better serve their residents.
In addition to her career as a dietitian, Marcia was also a committed educator. She received a master’s degree in education from Rutgers University, where she was inducted into the Kappa Delta Pi honor society. In the last decade of her professional career, she was a home and careers teacher for dependent youth and special needs students at St. Christopher’s School and Mt. Pleasant Cottage School, both in Westchester County, NY. She connected easily with her students and impressed them with her stellar foul shots on the schools’ basketball courts. She was also committed to adult education, and post-retirement continued to provide healthy eating education to fellow retirees in Chestertown, MD, and at Ann’s Choice in Warminster, PA.
Active in community affairs, Marcia served as president of the Milford Women’s Club, which supported the local public library. Following her children, who each served a term as student representative on the Palisades School Board, Marcia was appointed to fill a vacancy on the school board and was later elected to a full term, having secured the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Influenced by her maternal grandfather, George Kligfeld, who was a founder of what was then known as a Workingmen’s Circle, Marcia was a proud union member and ally. She refused to cross picket lines, was a shop steward in the Communications Workers of America, and retired as a member of the New York Federation of Teachers.
In addition to being a gourmet cook and expert knitter, Marcia was a competitive bridge player. After her bridge partner at Ann’s Choice unceremoniously broke up with her, she relished tracking her higher standing with her new partner.
Marcia made friends wherever she went, and her sly smile and sarcasm could win people over. But she did not suffer fools. She had a knack for ordering whatever a restaurant was out of, and the family apologizes to all the wait staff who had to deliver that news.
Marcia and Bob enjoyed over 63 years of marriage, marked by countless Scrabble games, New York Times crossword puzzles, dry Beefeater martinis on the rocks with a twist, red wine, chocolate, sports on TV with the sound off, road trips to New Hampshire to get more gin, and visits to the Museum of Modern Art.
Marcia was an incredibly proud mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother. She loved regaling her friends with the many accomplishments of her daughter Holly Yeager, son-in-law Mark Schmitt, son Jordan Berson Yeager, daughter-in-law Kathy Boockvar, and granddaughters Colette Boockvar Yeager and Claire Yeager Schmitt. In addition to her immediate family, she is also survived by her brother, Jeffrey Fogel, and many extended family and friends.
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