Mildred Jane “Midge” Wald
Mildred Jane “Midge” Wald passed away peacefully in her sleep early on the morning of Wednesday, May 12, 2021. She was 98 years of age. Her funeral service will be at 10:30 A.M. on Monday, May 24 at Scanio-Harper Funeral Home in Temple with Dr. Tom Robbins officiating. Graveside services will be at 2 P.M. Monday at the Central Texas Veterans Cemetery in Killeen. Visitation will be held the day before the funeral from 3 to 5 P.M. on Sunday, May 23 at Scanio-Harper Funeral home.
Midge was born January 1, 1923, to Sheldon Ellsworth and Elizabeth Kulp Haines in Daguscahonda, Elk County, Pennsylvania. She was the second oldest of four children, all of whom preceded her in death. Midge graduated from Nanticoke High School in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania and Kings County Hospital School of Nursing in Brooklyn, New York. She met the love of her life, Leon Yale Wald, on a blind date to see Frank Sinatra perform at the Paramount Theater in Times Square. Lee was a sailor in the Merchant Marine, and Midge was a student nurse. They married on January 21, 1944, in Nanticoke when Midge was 21 years and 21 days old. Their only child Linda Elizabeth was born 3 years later.
Midge and Lee lived primarily in the New York-Pennsylvania-Maryland area for the first 19 years of their marriage. During this time Lee became a Coast Guard officer, and Midge worked as a registered nurse, preferring the autonomy of public health nursing to hospital or clinic nursing. In 1955 or ‘56 they bought a small farm with a pre-Civil War stone house near Gettysburg, PA and spent nearly every weekend they lived there doing projects to improve it. In 1963 Lee was transferred to Port Arthur, Texas, and they began a new phase of…
