By Lauren FitzPatrick
Staff writer
Patriotic and selfless, Margaret J. Lane was the kind of lady who always put others before herself.
A young woman when World War II broke out, she followed in her brother’s footsteps to serve her country.
Margaret Trattner, as she was then known, was one of hundreds of thousands of American women who joined the Army through the Women’s Army Corps to do their part in battling the Axis Powers.
“Marge was just really proud to be in the service,” said longtime friend and fellow WAC Lois Sibal. “She was a patriotic person.”
Mrs. Lane died Dec. 5, just 13 days shy of her 80th birthday.
Without any previous medical training, Sibal and Mrs. Lane served in the 24th WAC Hospital Company in Illinois. The pair worked as surgical technicians, helping in the Hines VA Hospital, another old hospital near Hines and Mayo General Hospital in Galesburg.
Mrs. Lane mainly aided soldiers who had come home paralyzed. She patiently took temperatures, dosed medication, helped with eating and bathing — “the kind of the grunt work that allowed the nurses to do more of the stuff they needed to do,” said her son-in-law Emmett Hainsworth.
“Talk about a lady who’s got a long history of being very patriotic,” he said, describing her collections of flags and VFW and American Flag pins. “She’s got flags in her room — Marine flags, and her husband’s flag. Her nephew got her one from Pearl Harbor.”
Sibal said Mrs. Lane joined after her brother. The decision was a snap.
“All of our youth was in the service, all of our friends were in the service, all of our neighborhood friends — everyone,” she said.
Mrs. Lane proudly kept the awards she received for her service — a victory medal, an American theater ribbon, good conduct and meritorious medals — including a recently acquired one for service during the Cold War.
Born in Indianapolis, Mrs. Lane’s family moved a lot, but she was raised mostly in Chicago’s Chatham community.
After high school, she went to work at a company that made pipes for the Navy, where she met and immediately befriended Sibal.
After the war, she married a neighborhood boy, a friend of her brother’s, whose mother she came to know — and really like — while he was away in the service.
Eventually Mr. and Mrs. Ray Lane moved to Harvey where they raised seven children in close succession, six of them, each about a year and a half apart in age, eldest daughter Debby Hainsworth said.
“We didn’t have a lot of money,” Hainsworth said. With seven children plus a cousin who stayed with the family for five years, “money was stretched that many ways, but there was never for lack of love.”
Ray Lane worked in various day jobs — as a deputy sheriff in Cook County and as a real estate broker in Harvey. Ray Lane even ran for mayor, but lost. Meanwhile his wife went to work as a night nurse’s aide at St. Francis Hospital in Blue Island.
“She was so dedicated there,” Hainsworth said. “She never became a registered nurse but she easily could have done it; she knew everything to be a nurse.”
Emmett Hainsworth added, “She worked an 11-7 job so she could be home for the kids.”
And she made each child feel special, her daughter said.
“If it was your birthday, that was your day,” she said. “If we got sick, she took our temperatures, put cool cloths on our heads — she babied us so much we didn’t want to get well.”
Mrs. Lane made everyone feel welcome, even those she didn’t know well. There was always an extra place at the table even when food for all those mouths was tight, Hainsworth said.
“We had a great big dining room table,” she recalled. “We always had an a great big pot of something on the stove (for) Henry next door, Effie down the street.”
Or as her husband put it, “There were always strangers at the Christmas table. She was always taking food to people.”
By the end, Mrs. Lane was legally blind. Although she could see some shapes, she tapped around with a white cane, joking with the guys she ran into at Hines and other VA hospitals.
“She was always trying to boost people’s spirits,” her son-in-law said.
Mrs. Lane is also survived by sons David, Ray and Richard; daughters Donna Anderson, Karen Stanovich and Darlene Storino; 17 grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and many friends.
Arrangements were by Smits, DeYoung-Vrough Funeral Home, (708) 333-7000.
Memorials may be made to the Illinois Veterans Home.
Lauren FitzPatrick may be reached at lfitzpatrick@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5964.
