Gladys Bowden, a longtime Red Bank resident and volunteer injured in a December 15 fire at her home in Middletown, died early Saturday.
According to a Facebook post by her stepdaughter, Lisa Bowden, Gladys, 88, died at the Meridian Health rehab center in Shrewsbury, where she and her husband of 38 years, George Bowden, were reunited two weeks after the fire.
The blaze, determined to have been caused by an electrical heater, left the condo in the Shadow Lake Village community heavily damaged and killed the couple’s cat.
In August, 2015, the Red Bank council honored the Bowdens for nearly half a century of volunteer service in the borough. Gladys was cited for her work with Navesink Garden Club, and particularly in instituting its “Random Sightings of Beauty” award, and for her service on the borough’s Human Relations Advisory Committee. George, 91, was the founding member of the borough’s Historic Preservation Commission.
Here’s a video, from a Red Bank Public Library oral history series, of George being interviewed in 2015 by Ellen Daly about his marriage proposal to Gladys.
An obituary with service details can be found here.
