Marian Ford Pryce

Marian Ford Pryce, a retired nurse anesthetist who started spending summers in Sag Harbor in 1936 and lived in the Chatfield’s Hill neighborhood, died on Nov. 15 at Stony Brook University Hospital at the age of 82 following a stroke. Her death was sudden, her daughter, Courtney Pryce-Hudson, said, despite her having been ill with cancer that had gone into remission.

Born on Aug. 9, 1934, the oldest child of Theodore Nathaniel Ford and Edith Williams Ford, she grew up in Queens and spent her childhood summers in Sag Harbor Hills. She attended Jamaica High School, where she excelled academically, particularly in the sciences.

She went on to Hunter College in Manhattan with the hope of pursuing a teaching degree. She quickly realized that teaching was not for her, her family said, and she enrolled at Lincoln School of Nurses in the Bronx. Once she graduated in 1956, she began working as an operating room nurse at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.

She took an interest in anesthesiology and in 1961 enrolled in a two-year course for nurse anesthetists offered by the postgraduate medical school of New York University at Bellevue and became a certified registered nurse anesthetist. She also worked at Mercy Hospital.

She married Ronald Altman Pryce on Dec. 9, 1962, and they eventually moved to Freeport on Long Island. With their children they shared many happy times over the summers in Sag Harbor with friends and family. They bought a house on Carver Street in 1974.

In 1998, Ms. Pryce retired from La Guardia Hospital to take on the role of “full-time grandmother, a job she often said she enjoyed more than nursing,” her family said. The following year, the Pryces moved full time to Sag Harbor, “where they introduced their grandchildren to all of the pleasures that living on the eastern end of Long Island offers.”

Her family described her as “a caring and nurturing friend who could always be counted on for her wisdom, strength, and sense of humor,” and said she was the “ultimate caregiver.” Even as her own health declined, she cared for her sister, Shirley Ford Garrett, who had Parkinson’s disease, until her death in October.

Ms. Pryce’s husband died in 2009, and her son, Ross Pryce, died in 2015.

In addition to her daughter, who lives in Laurelton, Queens, a brother, Theodore Ford of Jamaica, Queens, survives her, as do three grandchildren and a nephew. Services were held last week.