Mary Jane Bonner

Mary Jane Bonner, a longtime Baltimore resident and retired Baltimore County employee, died Feb. 2 after a brief illness in Fort Myers, Florida. She was 88.

The daughter of James Duffy, a police detective, and Mary Misché, a homemaker, “Jane” Duffy was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where she graduated from Meyers High School in 1944.

In 1945 she married her high school sweetheart, John C. Bonner, following his return from service as a paratrooper during World War II. Shortly after her husband joined the FBI in 1950, the young family moved to the Northwood neighborhood in Baltimore, then later to Campus Hills in Towson. An FBI assignment took the Bonners to Moraga, California in the early 1970s, then back to Maryland. Mrs. Bonner joined the State’s Attorney’s Office in Towson as a receptionist in 1974.

Following retirement, she and her husband moved to Sanibel, Florida, where Mrs. Bonner opened a successful boutique, The Golden Pear. A longtime parishioner of The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Towson, she was a member of St. Isabel Parish in Sanibel at the time of her death.

“She was a natural beauty, inside and out,” said her son, John C. (“Chris”) Bonner of Ormond Beach. “As kids, we were proud of how Mom cared for her family and her home and made it all so happy and welcoming.”

Her husband died in 1990.

In addition to her son, Mrs. Bonner is survived by three daughters, Elaine Pevenstein of Hunt Valley, Maureen O’Hara of Lutherville, and JoAnn Rogers of Rehoboth Beach, DE, another son, Kevin Bonner, of Timonium; sixteen grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. Her daughter Jane Evertz died in 2008.

Funeral services will be held at St. Isabel on Thursday, February 5. Interment will be at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre on February 16.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to St. Isabel Catholic Church, 3539 Sanibel-Captiva Rd., Sanibel, FL 33957; or Hope Hospice, 9470 Health Park Circle, Ft. Myers, FL 33908.