Marie S. Cragg, a retired Baltimore public school educator who also worked in her husband's Irvington pharmacy, died Tuesday of heart failure at her daughter's home in Great Falls, Va. She was 88.

Marie Stafford was the daughter of Willis Ray Stafford Jr., the Eastern Shore general manager for the Koester Baking Co., and Naomi Eliza Haymond Stafford, a homemaker.

She was born and raised in Easton, and graduated from Easton High School.

After earning a bachelor's degree in the early 1950s from the University of Maryland, College Park, Mrs. Cragg taught morning and afternoon kindergarten from 1952 to 1958 at Irvington Elementary School.

She met James Phillip “Tim” Cragg Jr., a pharmacist who owned the Irvington Pharmacy at Frederick and Augusta avenues, during the 1950s. She would drop in at the drugstore at the end of her school day. They married in 1957.

After the birth of her daughter, she returned to teaching in 1968 at Dickey Hill Elementary. She retired in 1980.

After leaving teaching, she worked in the pharmacy as a bookkeeper until the couple sold the business in 1988.

The longtime former Ellicott City resident was proud of her Eastern Shore heritage, said her son, James Phillip Cragg III of Federal Hill.

She also had fond memories of sailing the Magothy River and the Chesapeake Bay with her brother, Willis Ray.

Graveside services will be held at 11 a.m. today at Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery, 11365 Ocean Gateway Drive, Easton.

In addition to her son, she is survived by a daughter, Pamela Stafford Cragg Singleton of Great Falls; an aunt; and several cousins.

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— Frederick N. Rasmussen