Gladys Hulitt, hospital worker

Gladys Norton Hulitt, 98, a director of volunteers at Methodist Hospital in Philadelphia from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, died Tuesday, March 15, at a long-term care center at the Good Samaritan Society in Waconia, Minn.

As the wife of the Rev. Daniel Hulitt, a Methodist pastor in South Jersey, Mrs. Hulitt began as a Methodist Hospital volunteer in the early 1960s, son Daniel B. said.

"It was a litany of things she was doing," her son said. "Answering phones to taking books to patients, whatever was needed."

After directing volunteers, her son said, she was the hospital's director of public relations and volunteers until she retired in 1980.

As a minister's wife, once her two sons were growing, "she wanted to do something; a hospital was something important," he said.

Mrs. Hulitt grew up in the Centre Square section of Logan Township, graduated from high school, where she was the May Queen, and, in 1939, the year she turned 22, married Daniel Hulitt.

In her husband's 11 churches during his career in the Southern New Jersey Methodist Conference, her son said, "she was very involved - doing Bible studies, working with women's societies."

The marriage, he said, "was a package deal."

It began on a shoestring. His first assignments consisted of what was called the "Buckshutem Circuit" in Cumberland County, covering Buckshutem, Centre Grove, and North Port Norris, for which, the pastor told a reporter in 2002, he was paid a salary of $228 a year.

After retiring in 1983 as the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Moorestown, his son said, he continued his work as an assistant at a Methodist church in Tuckahoe, retiring again in 1993.

Besides her son, Mrs. Hulitt is survived by a brother, four grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Her husband of 68 years died in 2007. Their son Douglas died in 2013.

A life celebration was set for 1 p.m. Saturday, April 23, at Centre Square Union United Methodist Church, 2180 Centre Square Rd., Logan Township.

Donations may be sent to the church office at 7 Church St., Bridgeport, N.J. 08014.

Condolences may be offered to the family at www.lewisfuneralhomemoorestown.com.

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