Eileen S. Gulley

RICA Volunteer Coordinator

A Most Remarkable Woman. An Exceptional Life.

Eileen Stanard Gulley died at St. Agnes Hospital on February 20, 2012 after a brief illness. She was 92 years young. She had been in the care of her family at her home in Catonsville since surviving a stroke on Mother’s Day morning 2005 that left her paralyzed and wheelchair bound, yet able to continue an exceptional quality of life through her resilience and indomitable spirit.

Born Eileen Patricia Stanard on May 7, 1919 in Cleveland, Ohio to James J. Stanard, an engineer on the New York Central Railroad who earlier worked on the Panama Canal, and Ellen Roddy Stanard, an Ellis Island émigré from County Cork, Ireland. She was a descendant of the three Stanard Brothers, Clipper Ship captains on the Great Lakes and for whom Stanard Rock Lighthouse in Lake Superior is named.

A tall and slender beauty, family rumor had it that while out on a date with her future husband, baseball great Ted Williams had come to meet her when the Boston Red Sox were in town. In 1942, she married Joseph Frederick Gulley, himself a handsome Marine Corps officer from Binghamton, NY serving as a recruiter in Cleveland. He served with the Marine Air Wing aboard the USS Ranger during the battle for Okinawa in 1945. After the war, his lifelong employer, The Lincoln Electric Company, transferred Captain Gulley to Baltimore.

Of the couple’s six children born between 1944 and 1957, two sons were born with severe mental retardation. In 1952, 2 years before the advent of the Salk Vaccine, four of their children contracted polio. Armed with her fierce intelligence and fortitude, she weathered the trials and tribulations of the ensuing years, managing to maintain a sense of purpose, dignity, accomplishment for her family, never compromising her principles nor relinquishing her sense of humor.

After her children were grown, she joined the State of Maryland’s Regional Institute for Children and Adolescents serving and eventually retiring as the Volunteer Coordinator. She also obtained her AA Degree from Catonsville Community College. A Past President of the Mount St. Joseph’s Mother’s Club, she was asked to model in the organizations charitable fashion shows along with those of a number of local department store and civic organizations.

Widowed at 65, she became a humorously self-described liberated woman, inveterate traveler, and civil rights activist, successfully organizing opposition to then Governor Glendening’s plans to outsource mentally disadvantaged patients in state run facilities to group homes under the care of minimally-skilled aides.

She was preceded in death by her sons Timothy and Thomas and her daughter Colleen. Daughters Margaret Etzler of Bishopville, MD and Mary Bartolucci of St. John, USVI, a son, James of Catonsville, a sister, Alice Murphy of Cleveland, five grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews, survive her.

The family has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in her name to The Potomac Center, 1380 Marshall Street, Hagerstown, MD 21740.