Marcia A. Yeates

Marcia Yeates   (11/1/1933 - 9/13/2025)

Marcia Yeates passed away peacefully on Saturday evening, September 13, 2025, in the company of two of her loving children. She was 91 years old.

Marcia was born on November 1st, 1933, to parents Charles Edward Lafferty, Sr., and Gertrude Mary Lafferty (née Doyle), and grew up in the then bucolic Edgewood neighborhood of Cranston, a suburb of Providence, Rhode Island. She was the oldest girl in what was a lively New England family, just behind Charles Jr., and ahead of brothers John and Jim, and kid sister Joan.

Marcia attended the Saint Paul School in Edgewood, graduating valedictorian, and made lifelong friends with several classmates, including the irrepressible Maury Stevens (née Fickinger). Maury, a capable basketball player, may have informed the school’s coach, Father Devaney,that there would be no joining the team unless a spot was also found for her diminutive best friend, Marcia. Maury prevailed.

After the war, Marcia’s father, who worked for Met Life, was relocated to their New York headquarters and the Lafferty family moved down from Rhode Island to the peaceful village of Massapequa Park, on Long Island, New York. From here, Marcia entered Hofstra University and graduated with a B.A. in English Literature in 1955.

While at Hofstra, in a Russian Studies class, she met a dashing young US Marine,Herb Yeates, Jr.. Herb had just returned from military service in Korea, and though her ideological heroes lay closer to Adlai Stevenson than uniformed warriors from the Korean conflict, the two soon became inseparable.

Following graduation, Herb joined the New York Telephone company, and the newlyweds purchased a small Levitt-style home under construction at the very southern limits of Wantagh. Marcia began teaching in local public elementary schools, but family demands made continuing classroom work impractical. She soon gave birth to Herbert Hardwick III, Alison Joan, Joanne Elizabeth, Nancy Ann, and Christopher Charles. With a growing family, in 1964 the Yeates relocated to a larger home on Park Avenue in Wantagh and remained there into the early 1980s.

Marcia loved the Arts, literature and writing, and was a lifelong aficionado of The New Yorker magazine and the New York Times; one of her weekly personal challenges was solving the more difficult crossword puzzles each week’s editions brought. She nearly always won. In younger years, Marcia also loved to travel, visiting the UK several times, and making at least six (6) pilgrimages to her beloved Italy, and twice visiting her son and daughter-in-law based in Tokyo, Japan.

Marcia also found time to serve as an editor for a local newspaper, the Wantagh-Seaford Citizen, and later, for many years, with the Episcopal Newsletter of the Diocese of Garden City, NY.

She was very active in her community, and helped raise funds to get a new library built (the current one, located opposite the Wantagh post office), and assisted the Wantagh Preservation Society’s efforts to preserve Wantagh’s old LIRR train station, which today is a well maintained small town park.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Marcia  was politically active as well, and participated in various campaigns, including the successful election of Allard K. Lowenstein to the US Congress’s 5th Congressional District.

Despite her relocation to New York in late childhood, Marcia felt culturally tied to the Boston / Rhode Island area right through to her last days. Truly, a Red Sox fan was in the house.

Marcia is survived by her loving children: Herb Hardwick III, Nancy Ann, Christopher Charles; their respective spouses and families; grandson Charles and great-granddaughter Ella; and possibly her most favorite “child”, her son-in-law Michael Keefe, who lovingly made Marcia’s ‘independent living’ lifestyle,while a senior citizen, possible.Marcia was loved by many, and we are all blessed to have known her.

A funeral service will be held on Saturday, September 27, 2025 at 10:30 a.m. at The Church of St. Jude, 3606 Lufberry Ave, Wantagh, NY 11793.

In lieu of flowers, we ask friends consider donating to The Church of St. Jude.