SOUTH PALM BEACH — Doris B. O’Leary, a gracious New Englander who lived in South Palm Beach for more than half a century — by all accounts longer than anyone else in town — died May 28. She was 102, perhaps the oldest person in town.
Mrs. O’Leary and her husband, Arthur, plunked down cash for a condominium at the Imperial House, which hadn’t been built yet, in about 1960. That pre-construction purchase served the New England transplants well.
The couple never moved from their Imperial House home. Her husband died in the late 1970s and Mrs. O’Leary carried on for decades, attending condominium association meetings faithfully and worshiping at the First Presbyterian Church in Lake Worth.
“She was a real lady, always elegantly dressed and fashionable,” said South Palm Beach Councilwoman Bonnie Fischer, an Imperial House neighbor who knew Mrs. O’Leary for several decades.
Mrs. O’Leary enjoyed lunches out, always carefully coiffed and well-dressed, friends said. “She was always smiling and acknowledged everyone she met,” said Mary Ann Kreidler, whose parents knew Mrs. O’Leary well. “She was the picture of decorum and fashion.”
Her neighbors threw a Founders Day roof-top party a couple of years ago. Although she never needed glasses or a hearing aid, her memory had begun to slip. She was asked how old she was.
“Oh, no, tell me again,” she said. Told she was 100, she replied, “Isn’t that just awful.”
“She always looked like a million dollars,” said Fischer, who added that Mrs. O’Leary appeared to be decades younger than her age. “You would never guess than she was 100.”
Even though she never swam in the Imperial House pool, she donated money to buy a pool heater.
Mrs. O’Leary was born in Kensington, Conn., to Clarence and Jennie Baldwin. Her father, a steel company executive in the early decades of the 20th century, sent her to the LaSalle Finishing School in Boston.
She is survived by two nieces, several cousins and one godchild. Memorial services were held June 4 at Dorsey-E. Earl Smith Memory Gardens Funeral Home in Lake Worth. A number of her Imperial House neighbors attended.
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