Marian Bonds

Marian Forbes Bonds died on July 7, 2017 in the nursing center at her retirement community, Fleet Landing in Atlantic Beach, Florida, after a long illness from progressive heart failure. She was 93.

She was born Marian Oliver Forbes on August 7, 1923 in Savannah, Georgia, the daughter of Bernard Brown Forbes, Jr. (1893–1947) and Jennie Ennis (1894–1984). Raised in Virginia and Maryland, she graduated from Sparks High School (Sparks, Maryland) in 1939 and became a schoolteacher. After graduating from Towson State Teachers College (Towson, Maryland) in 1944, during the height of World War II, she joined the WAVES, serving in the Code Room at the Navy Department in Washington, DC. She married Joseph Elee Bonds III of Alhambra, California, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy’s Class of 1945, in the Academy’s chapel on October 2, 1945, and over the next three decades she and Joe lived in more than a dozen different places around the world as he pursued his career as a Naval officer. Over a 35-year period following his retirement in 1974, they took more than 120 ocean cruises together. They moved to Fleet Landing in 1991, and he predeceased her in 2011 a few months before their 66th wedding anniversary.

Marian enjoyed raising her family, traveling, cooking, sewing, reading — Jane Austen was a favorite — and history, especially the U.S. Civil War. She is survived by her three children, Christine, 71, of Scottsdale, Arizona; Robert, 67, of New Haven, Connecticut; Evan, 63, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

An interment ceremony for Marian and Joe will be held later this year at the columbarium on the campus of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Contributions in lieu of flowers may be made to Christ Episcopal Church, Ponte Vedra, Florida.