Delaware Stories

Marcia Bonifas, Dover

MARCIA BONIFAS
(Nominated by Priscilla Scott)
Dover Fire Department Headquarters
June 16, 2011

Marcia Bonifas is a dedicated, reliable and highly personable volunteer at the South Coastal Library in Bethany Beach, Delaware. She is also a volunteer with Friends of the Fallen. She hosts families of fallen servicemen and women at the Dover Air Force Base Center for Families of the Fallen’s Fisher House which provides a venue of comfort for the families of fallen soldiers who arrive for their “dignified transfer” from foreign to American soil.  And so that little children, who are trying to mentally and emotionally process great loss, don’t have to do so empty-handed, Marcia gives them each a lovingly-handmade-in-America Teddy Bear. Originally sewn by volunteers throughout Sussex County, Delaware they now number about 75, and are spread across Delaware, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Marcia Bonifas is recently retired from her position in beneficiary information with the Department of Defense, and she herself is a military widow whose husband, the late Major Arthur Bonifas, gave his life in Korea. He is remembered there as the hero after whom Camp Bonifas in Panmunjom is named.