Nurse Pluges To Death From Hotel Window

   Miss Marian Stone, 27, San Francisco visiting nurse, plunged to her
death late yesterday from her sixth floor hotel room at 346 Sutter Street.

   Police said they believed she had committed suicide.

   Police found in the girl's room a letter addressed to Robert
Shelly, 608 O'Farrell Street. He said he had met Miss Stone some time
ago at a dance and that since then she had several times threatened
suicide.  Last Friday, he said, he took her to the Central Emergency
Hospital for treatment for hysteria.

   Harry Vensaur, 585 Bush Street said he had seen the girl sitting on
the window ledge and that suddenly she rolled off into space.

   In her death plunge, Miss Stone struck the ledge, four stories
below, of a building next door, and hurtled through a lightwell to the
concrete floor of an alleyway.  She died shortly after being removed
to Harbor Emergency Hospital.

   She had been living at the hotel since May 25.  Letters in her room
indicated she is survived by a mother and two sisters living in
Waseca, Minn.


San Francisco Chronicle, Tues June 29, 1937, page 4
Located and typed by Dennis Nicklaus, August, 1995

In October, 1995, Marion's cousin, Ludwig A. Heger h,ad this to say
about the circumstances of her death:

Her mother, a nurse, died from T.B. when Marion was about 5 or 6.  I
can tell that from pictures of us at that age.  Her dad was Harold.
She never knew him, but looked to her dying day. She lived a secluded
life with Grandma, Agnes Blaha, but was closer than a sister to me
(same age).  We confided in each other and she was planning on coming
to Panama, to see me.  For that reason, I really doubt the suicide.
Her window had no screens, so nurses would sit on the window sills to
get cool air.  She was doing 2 private cases at one time and was
probably tired, closed her eyes and it happened.  She wanted to be an
anesthesist and was saving for it.  The nuns loved her.  She went to
Col.  for nurses training because it was 3 years versus 4 elsewhere.
Our uncle Andrew Blaha helped her.  Genevieve brought the body back to
Minn.  A nurse would normally take a fatal poison -- not a jump.  I'll
always believe that.  I went to the congressional library, to read the
papers, on my return to the USA.  The SF police were, as usual, going
through a scandal, so, for an unimportant fatality said, "beautiful
girl leaps to death, case closed."  She had no brothers or sisters.
The police & reporters looted Marion's room and went into all her
personal stuff before Genevieve got there.