JARS v52n2 - In Memoriam: Mary Caroline Gable

In Memoriam: Mary Caroline Gable

Mary Caroline Gable, age 75, of Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, daughter of well-known rhododendron hybridizer Joseph B. Gable and Mary B. Gable, died in February 1998. She was a partner in Gable's Nursery, established in the 1920s. Her passing marks the final chapter in the Joe Gable saga, as the Gable Nursery now no longer exists. Joe Gable named a rhododendron, 'Caroline', after her.

Besides a partner in the nursery business, Ms. Gable was a newspaper reporter for 44 years for the Stewartstown Gazette and Daily and its successor, the York Daily Record, retiring in 1988. Her colleagues remember her as a private person with a sense of humor and an accurate reporter who didn't want her byline on stories. The day she retired she simply wrote "-30-" on her calendar and walked out without a fuss. (The term "-30-" in the newspaper business means "end of text.") Ms. Gable was a member of the American Rhododendron Society, the Azalea Society, the Magnolia Society and the Holly Society.