Marion Phyllis Crocker; Scion of Railroad-Building Family

Marion Phyllis Crocker, 98, descendant of the railroad-building family who linked the American coasts in the last century. Miss Crocker was the first of her class in San Francisco to go to France in World War I to drive an ambulance, remaining with the American Field Service Committee until long after the armistice. She was the daughter of Henry J. and Mary Ives Crocker, a banking and oil businessman. Her grandfather, Clark Crocker, helped build the Central Pacific Railroad. Early in life she demonstrated that she craved excitement, taking a then-daring journey on a flying boat over San Francisco in 1911. The following year, she pooh-poohed the publicized complaints of an unidentified Army officer that he had been forced to make an arduous three-day, 90-mile horseback ride. Miss Crocker, who never married, set out to better him. She began on her father’s stallion, switched to her own, then finished on a pony from the family ranch. She had traveled 102 miles in 14 hours. In San Francisco on Sunday.