Margaret Biddle Robbins, 97, WWII veteran

Margaret Biddle Robbins, 97, of Gladwyne, a hostess, humanitarian, and World War II officer assigned to the Allied Supreme Headquarters, died of progressive weakness Monday, June 17, at Waverly Heights.

The former Margaret Atkinson was born in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, the eldest daughter of World War I veterans.

At 18, she left for Chicago to pursue higher education and a business career, but returned home at the start of World War II to be commissioned as an officer in the Canadian army.

She was assigned as a major to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) under Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in France and Germany.

On remote assignment during the war, she was exposed to combat. Once the battles ceased, she helped spirit out high-value individuals and refugees from the newly established Soviet zone of Germany.

In 1946, she met and married soldier and diplomat Anthony J. Drexel Biddle Jr., of Philadelphia, formerly U.S. ambassador to all the European governments-in-exile, and at that time chief of the Allied contact section of SHAEF.

It was his third marriage and her second. She had been married very briefly to William Ellery Loughborough. The marriage was annulled.

In Germany, she played a leadership role in the fledgling United Nations Relief & Rehabilitation Agency. The agency followed the troops into the concentration camps, and spawned the Conference of Women's Activities in Europe, whose goal was to spread relief efforts throughout the war-torn continent.

She later told family that the conditions in the camps were "like nothing you could believe."

Meanwhile, cousin-by-marriage Francis Biddle, U.S. judge at the Nuremberg Trials, engaged Mrs. Robbins as hostess for all his official social functions.

Through her work and her husband, she was acquainted with Edward VIII and Winston Churchill, and formed lifelong friendships with Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the Eisenhowers, and the Kennedy family.

In 1949, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

During the 1950s, Mrs. Robbins moved to Pennsylvania, where her husband, Gen. Biddle, was appointed adjutant general of his home state in 1955.

She homeschooled her two young children while juggling civic responsibilities. She served on the boards of the Army Distaff Foundation, the Crown Princess Martha Foundation, the Pulaski Foundation, and the former Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania.

In 1958, Eisenhower appointed her to chair the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, in effect, making her deputy defense secretary for women's affairs in the armed forces, her family said.

In addition, she was a member of Purdue University's Old Masters Program, and a judge of the 1959 Miss America Pageant. "She thought it was a hoot," said son Anthony J. Drexel Biddle III. "She picked Mary Ann Mobley of Mississippi, and she won."

In 1960, then-President Kennedy convinced Gen. Biddle to return to diplomacy; in 1961 he became the second U.S. ambassador to Spain since the 1936 Spanish Civil War.

As wife of the ambassador, Mrs. Robbins maintained a social and civic schedule designed to win the favor and ultimately the alliance of the Spanish government, her family said. She met with every one of her counterparts in the Madrid diplomatic corps; hosted major state, civic, and philanthropic affairs; and oversaw the completion of the new diplomat's residence on the grounds of the embassy.

When Gen. Biddle became ill in late summer 1961, she assumed many of his duties. For that effort, the Spanish government awarded her the Bow of Isabella la Catolica, the highest honor then given to a woman in Spain.

Gen. Biddle died of a heart attack on Nov. 13, 1961, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

She returned to Philadelphia, epicenter of the Biddle family, settling in Gladwyne. In 1969, with her children in college, she married her third husband, Col. Edwinston L. Robbins, who was retired from the Air Force and a close family friend.

They traveled extensively and spent winters in France and summers in Gladwyne before his death in 2001.

Surviving, in addition to her son, are daughter Meg Biddle; four grandchildren; a sister; and two nieces and a nephew.

Services were June 22. Her ashes will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery in late summer. Arrangements are pending.