Margaret Elizabeth Stapleton Dalton — Maggie to her many friends — died Monday, March 1, in Pinehurst, her home since 1974. She was 97.
Born Oct. 29, 1912, in Hattiesburg, Miss., to Lackey and Naomi Turner Stapleton, she grew up in the Panama Canal Zone, where her parents had moved several years before the canal opened in 1914. She graduated from Balboa High School in 1930, then studied for a year at what is now Mississippi University for Women.
In 1932 she married Carl A. Posey, a young civil engineer from Lawton, Okla. By the time the marriage ended in 1942, she had begun what would be a long career as a civilian employee of the U.S. Army. In December 1942, she and her son, Carl Jr., moved to Guatemala City, Guatemala, where she worked for the U.S. Army until returning to Panama in 1944.
On a 1947 voyage from Panama to New York, she met Gordon H. Dalton, then an assistant purser on the Panama Line ship Cristobal. They were married on Sept. 30, 1947, in Balboa, Canal Zone.
During the 1960s, while Margaret continued as a statistician with the Army, the Daltons opened their own travel agency, which, with its menu of innovative tours, prospered, and allowed the couple to travel widely. She retired from federal government service in 1973.
Both avid golfers, the Daltons first visited Pinehurst in the 1960s. In the mid-1970s, they sold their travel agency in Panama and moved to a home in the village of Pinehurst. In 1983, they built a new home on a five-acre lot at the Country Club of North Carolina, where they lived for almost two decades.
Throughout her many years in Pinehurst, Maggie was active in the Silver Foils, the oldest women’s recreational golfing group in the country, and the Garden Club. Continuing a Canal Zone tradition, she was a fine swimmer, a sport she practiced regularly into her 90s.
In 2004, the Daltons entered Carolina House, an assisted living facility in Pinehurst. By then, Margaret had lost what little remained of her vision. Gordon Dalton died in March 2005.
Margaret Dalton is survived by a son, Carl A. Posey Jr., and his wife, Ann Wadia, of Alexandria, Va.; and four grandchildren, Rafael, of Baltimore, Md., and Robin, Carl III, and Honor Posey, of Seattle, Wash.
Condolences may be made at www.bolesfuneralhome.com.
Boles Funeral Home of Pinehurst is serving the family.