The Community Foundation of the Eastern Shore was the beneficiary of the estate of Dr. Gladys M. Allen, who passed away November 2012. With this generous gift, the Community Foundation established the Gladys Martha Allen Aid to Education Fund.
Pictured are: Charles R. Dashiell, Jr., Hearne & Bailey, PA; Mary Ellen Shupe, Fund Representative; and Doug Wilson, President, Community Foundation.
A daughter of missionaries in India, Gladys was born in Jorhat, Asam, India. After her father passed away, Gladys came to the United States with her mother and sister. Gladys started elementary school at the Campus Elementary School of the Normal School, now Salisbury University. When she was eight years old, she returned to the Orient with her mother and sister. She and her sister attended high school in Landour, Mussoorie, in India before returning to America to finish high school and graduate from the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore in 1947.
Following her residency specializing in obstetrics and gynecology at the associated Women’s Hospital of Philadelphia, she returned to the land of her birth as a medical missionary for the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society where she worked at the mission hospital in Gauhati in Assam, India where at times she was the only doctor!
In 1959, she returned to Salisbury where she established a private practice in obstetrics and gynecology. She became public health officer in Wicomico County in 1974. She retired in 1986. She had been a member of Quota Club since 1959 and a member of Allen Memorial Baptist Church for most of her life.