Mary Margaret Campbell, affectionately known as Mayme, was the wife of Ellendale Eagle editor Cecil Campbell. Like her husband, Mayme played a vital role in the community. She helped found the Legion Auxiliary ninety-eight years ago in February 1922.
Mayme was born in 1897 outside of Geneva. She married Marine veteran Cecil Campbell in 1919, the day before her twenty-second birthday. The couple had no children but they cared for two of their nieces and a nephew after Mayme’s sister died.
In 1922, Mayme organized the Women’s Auxiliary Unit at Ellendale’s Post 296. For a time she served as Vice President of the First District Auxiliary, a subdivision of the Minnesota Auxiliary covering the southeast portion of the state.
Tragedy struck in 1933 when doctors diagnosed Mayme with Addison’s disease, “an ailment that had always baffled the skill of the greatest medical authorities.” She sought care at the Mayo Clinic and took experimental treatments in the hope of finding a cure for herself and for others.
The disease took its toll, forcing her to cut back on her activities with the Auxiliary. In the autumn of 1939, Mayme caught a cold and died just days after her forty-second birthday and her twentieth wedding anniversary. The entire Auxiliary Unit attended her funeral and six local Legionnaires served as pallbearers.
An obituary in the Ellendale Eagle praised Mayme’s “lovely personality, her unusual resourcefulness and her great willingness to serve.”
