By Joshua Benton
Blade Staff Writer
Page 15
DEFIANCE — Margene Steingass, a pharmacist who had worked for four decades in area drug stores, died Saturday at her home. She was 71.
She had faced a lengthy battle with cancer, according to her son, Paul.
Mrs. Steingass was born and raised in Tiffin, until her family moved to Defiance, just in time for her to attend Defiance High School. Her father ran a paint and wallpaper store there.
She went on to the University of Toledo’s pharmacy college, graduating in 1949.
“There probably were not a lot of other women there back then,” her son said.
Mrs. Steingass loved her work because it allowed her to help others.
“She really cared about people,” her son recalled. “It wasn’t just a job where she was counting out pills.”
One of the customers she met at an early pharmacy job turned out to be more special than most. It was Paul Steingass, whom she married in 1952.
She worked at drug stores in Paulding and Defiance, spending the most time, 20 years, at Fry Pharmacy and 18 years at Daoust Drugs.
Her son, who had worked alongside his mother while he was in high school, said he was always impressed by Mrs. Steingass’s “genuine concern for other people’s well-being.”
In her spare time, she enjoyed bowling and did some traveling with an informal group of friends from high school.
This time of year, she usually could be found hunting for morel mushrooms, which are out for only a brief time.
After she was diagnosed with cancer, “She fought it hard, right to the very end,” her son said.
Mrs. Steingass was up and walking throughout her sickness until the day before she died in her sleep.
Surviving are her husband, Paul Steingass; a daughter, Jane Skinner; two sons, John and Steven Steingass; her mother, Wanda Oller; a sister, Rodilla Barclay, and seven grandchildren.
Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Most-Mock-Hoffman Funeral Home, Defiance, where the body will be after 2 p.m. today.
The body also will be available for visitation an hour before the funeral. Burial will follow in Riverview Memorial Gardens in rural Defiance County.
The family requests that tributes be to Caring Way Hospice of Defiance County or Cancer Care of Defiance.