Gloria Warble Singer

Gloria was born on June 19, 1942, in Pontiac, Michigan, to Don and Pearl Warble. She graduated from Anoka HIgh School, studied at St. Olaf College, and graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor’s Degree. She worked in child welfare in St. Paul and Duluth, then earned a Master’s Degree in Social Work at the University of Minnesota Duluth, and taught social work at Bemidji State University and the College of St. Scholastica. She then worked as a psychotherapist at Miller Dwan Hospital and for various Employee Assistance Programs. She moved to Newmarket, New Hampshire, where she continued her EAP/psychotherapy work until she retired.

She met and married Harvard Sitkoff in New Hampshire, who preceded her in death in 2025.

Gloria had a profound love of music and found ways to be involved in it throughout her life. She played the clarinet through college and loved to sing. She sang with Voices from the Heart in New Market, NH for many years, performing and touring with the group, and finally, she sang with Singers and Ringers at Searstone Retirement Community in Cary, NC. She loved the organ and congregational singing at Pilgrim Congregational Church in Duluth.

She also deeply enjoyed poetry and had a sophisticated taste in art, surrounding herself with original artworks even in her final days.

Gloria was a quiet trailblazer when being a single working mother was highly unusual and difficult. In her work, she was one of the first to apply a feminist approach to psychotherapy, as cited in the book Making Waves: Grassroots Feminism in Duluth and Superior by Elizabeth Bartlett. She and her group of lifelong friends — Mary Graff, Mary Martin, Sandy Christian, and Nancy Tubesing — together shared the struggles and triumphs of the 1970s feminist movement in the Twin Ports.

She was a devoted mother who, after a long day teaching, would bring home stacks of papers to grade and set them aside to cook a hot supper for her children. She had a dry and subtly sarcastic sense of humor, often leaving people guessing as to whether she was joking or not. While in hospice, nurses had to be told that a tiny snort from Gloria meant she was furious — just in a Minnesota way.

Gloria is survived by her children Erin (Paul) Miller and Brian Singer; her stepchildren Alexandra (Hao Vuong), Adam, Erica (David Treewater) and Charles (Erica Fener Sitkoff) Sitkoff, and grandchildren Rachel Stallings, Alek Singer, Hannah Singer, Maya Miller, and Naomi Miller, Gavin Sitkoff-Vuong, Annie Treewater, Henry Treewater and Miles Sitkoff.

Instead of flowers, the family encourages memorial donations to any of the following organizations that were important to Gloria:

St. Olaf College

The University of Minnesota

Justice Theater Project of Raleigh, North Carolina

North Carolina Symphony