Esther Louise (McMorran) Mann

Esther Louise (McMorran) Mann, age 95, of Sudbury, passed away on March 26, 2019 at the Care Dimensions Hospice House in Lincoln.

Esther was born in Lincoln, NH, on July 23, 1923. She was the daughter of Henry McMorran and Mary (Towers) McMorran, the third of seven McMorran children, six sisters and a brother. In 1941, at the age of 18, she moved to Boston to train as a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital where she was pressed dramatically into service treating hundreds of burn victims of the Coconut Grove nightclub fire. In 1947 she left her work at Mass General to marry Edward Warren Mann of Lincoln, MA. To accommodate their growing family they moved to ever-larger homes in Lincoln and Acton, finally settling in Sudbury for six decades. Nursing was a life-long career and passion for Esther. She continued to work while raising five children at Emerson Hospital's blood bank, on medical research projects, and for decades in the office of Lincoln cardiologist Dr. Charles S. Keevil. She retired in 1984, but never stopped working. She believed in the idea of community, and until well into her 90s dedicated her time, intelligence, organizational skills and her boundless energy to acting on that belief.

She served on the boards of the Sudbury Senior Center, the Parmenter Foundation, the Sudbury Historical Society, and on the Emerson Hospital Ethics Committee. She volunteered at Sudbury's Goodnow Public Library and in the public schools. Passionately political, she manned the polls every election day, was active in the League of Women Voters, and during the Viet Nam era could be found every Friday afternoon at the anti-war protests in Sudbury center. She loved hiking, whether in Sudbury's woods, the English countryside, or New Zealand's mountains. And more than anything she loved the company of her grandchildren.

Esther was pre-deceased by her husband Edward in 2003 and her son Christopher in 2014. She is survived by her children Elizabeth, Charles, Thomas and Douglas, ten grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Family and friends will gather to honor and remember Esther for her memorial service on Saturday, April 20 at 10:00am in Concord Funeral Home, 74 Belknap St., Concord.

In lieu of flowers please donate to
Sudbury Historical Society
322 Concord Road #2
Sudbury, MA 01776
or
Doctors Without Borders
40 Rector Street, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10006