Geraldine Hamilton, who would have been 96 in July 2007, passed away peacefully at home after a long struggle with congestive heart failure and dementia. She was on hospice care for the last six months. Since 2003 she had been living with her nephew, longtime Rockville Center resident Anthony S. Hendrick.
Born in Manhattan, she was a lifelong resident of the Bronx and also a lifelong member of St. James Episcopal Church Fordham. She was a direct descendant of Alexander Hamilton. Her older sister, Mrs. Eleanore H. Hendrick, Rockville Center resident and Oceanside school teacher, died in 1958. Geraldine died on what would have been Eleanore’s 100th birthday. She was also predeceased by her brothers John Alexander Hamilton, Jr. and Lander Charles Hamilton. She is survived by nephews Anthony Hendrick and William Hamilton and niece Mrs. Susan Benzinger.
Geraldine retired in 1976 from the NYPD where she had worked in the Police Property Clerk’s Office in Manhattan, dealing with items of evidence. Both of her brothers were NYPD officers.
As a young woman she pursued her career as a singer and appeared in several Broadway shows. These included White Horse Inn in 1936, starring Kitty Carlyle (Hart) and William Gargan; I’d Rather Be Right in 1937 starring George M. Cohan as an FDR-like President; and The Devil and Daniel Webster as staged by John Housman in 1939. She also appeared in American Jubilee, an outdoor musical extravaganza presented at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair, with dialogue by Oscar Hammerstein II and music by Arthur Schwartz.
She donated her body to the Medical School at SUNY-Stony Brook. Her cremated remains will later be interred in the Hamilton family plot in the Flushing Cemetery.
