Marjorie W. Vail McCone, 91, teacher and coach

Marjorie W. Vail McCone, 91, of Wayne, a retired physical education teacher and coach, died at Sunrise at Granite Run, an assisted-living facility in Media, on Thursday, June 3, her 66th wedding anniversary.

For more than 20 years, Mrs. McCone taught gym and coached sports teams at Radnor Middle School. Her hockey, basketball, and lacrosse teams were undefeated for 13 years, said a son, Thomas.

According to a history of Radnor Middle School, until 1971 the upper gym was for boys only. Girls' gym classes were held in a dank, concrete-floored lower gym. Because there was a spring under the building, the gym flooded whenever the pumps stopped working, and Mrs. McCone had to monitor the weather and the pumps.

On days when her girls' lacrosse team had a home game, she carted wood chips from the wood shop to lay in front of the goalposts at the soggy field behind the school.

After retiring from Radnor Middle School's athletic department in 1981, she continued to coach lacrosse until 1994 and assisted the Radnor High School lacrosse coach.

Mrs. McCone grew up in Ocean City, N.J. An outstanding athlete, she qualified as a sprinter on the U.S. Olympic team in 1940; the games were canceled because of the war.

She attended Penn Hall Junior College in Chambersburg, Pa., on a tennis scholarship and then earned a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College, where she also had a tennis scholarship. Her son said she continued to play tennis into her 80s.

Mrs. McCone taught in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Tennessee for a year, then taught for several years at Moorestown Friends School.

She and her future husband, Henry McCone, met at the Colonial Hotel in Cape May, where she had a summer job waitressing and he was the night clerk. They married in 1944, before he shipped out with the Merchant Marine.

He had been a conscientious objector during World War II and spent several months in a federal prison in Virginia, charged with draft evasion. He was released to do alternative service in the Merchant Marine.

After the war, Mrs. McCone and her husband lived in Virginia and Washington, D.C. They moved to Wayne in 1958, when he took a job teaching American history at Radnor High.

While teaching, the McCones operated the Ocean City Tennis Club in New Jersey for more than a decade, until 1971.

Over the years, they opened their home to several troubled teens, giving them a foundation of love and comfort, their son said.

Henry McCone died in 2005.

A talented soprano, Mrs. McCone sang with the Wayne Oratorio Society. She also sang in the choir at Central Baptist Church. A celebration of her life will be held at the church, 106 W. Lancaster Ave., Wayne, at 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 7.

In addition to her son, Mrs. McCone is survived by sons Scott, Douglas, and Robert; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.