Marilyn G. Toohey, who served for 17 years as mayor of the Village of Lewiston and was the first woman to win elective office there, died Sunday, July 2nd, in her Lewiston home, eight days after her 100th birthday.
During her tenure, she oversaw two major projects that enhanced the modern transformation of the village – the revitalization of the waterfront along the Niagara River and the upgrade of 3 miles along Center Street, the main thoroughfare, with new curbs, sidewalks, landscaping and signs, for which she secured $1.45 million in state funding.
Born Marilyn Hoag, the youngest of four children, she grew up on a farm in Warren’s Corners, near Lockport, and attended a two-room elementary school. The farm was sold while she was attending Lockport High School and the family moved to Niagara Falls, where she graduated with honors in English from Niagara Falls High School in 1940.
After attending college in Westminster, Md., she returned to study at a business school, then worked as a bank clerk and as an office clerk in an industrial plant. By then her family had moved to Lewiston, where she met Matthew F. Toohey. They were married in 1943 and became parents of six children.
She worked part-time at a drugstore in Lewiston and in the mid 1960s took a position in the Niagara County Clerk’s Office. She became deputy county clerk and was in charge of the Auto Bureau office in Niagara Falls when she retired.
Her husband, an employee of the Lewiston Water Department who was prominent in local politics and a village trustee for eight years, died in 1973. Two years later, village Democrats endorsed Mrs. Toohey to run for a vacant seat on the Village Board.
She was named deputy mayor in April 1977 and acting mayor in June when Mayor Edward R. Shuster took a leave of absence because of his job. She officially succeeded him in November when he resigned, then won election to a full term in 1978.
She served until 1994, when she announced that she would not seek reelection. Among her duties as mayor, she performed the marriage ceremony for her daughter Colleen in the garden of her home in 1980.
Mrs. Toohey chaired the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency. She also was active in the New York State Conference of Mayors and the Western New York Association of Villages.
In appreciation of her service as mayor, village trustees renamed the park at the Red Brick Municipal Building in her honor in 1995. It now is the site of an inclusive playground.
In addition to gardening, she enjoyed traveling throughout the U.S., Europe and the Caribbean.
Surviving are four sons, Brian, Tim, Dennis and Kevin; 18 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren. Her daughter Colleen Porter died in 2012. Another daughter, Maureen, died in 2010.