Margery Hartman Oakes, a longtime seasonal Chilmark resident, died peacefully at her New York home overlooking Central Park on Nov. 20. She was 98.

She and her late husband, John B. Oakes, longtime editor of the editorial page of the New York Times and later an Op Ed Page columnist, summered above Stonewall Beach from the 1960s until Mr. Oakes’s death in 2001.

She was born in West Hartford, Conn., the daughter of Estelle (Stein) Hartman and Emmanuel H. Hartman, a pioneer in the shade-grown tobacco industry in Connecticut. She was a 1938 graduate of Bryn Mawr College and a proud and devoted alumna. After her graduation and the start of World War II, she worked as a writer and editor in the Office of War Information in Washington, D.C., and in 1945 married Mr. Oakes. For some years at the beginning of his journalistic career, they lived in Paris. Later, she often traveled with him when his job took him abroad and, well into her 90s she recalled with clarity and enthusiasm meeting such international figures as Fidel Castro of Cuba, the late Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip of England, and traveling on the Amazon. Slender, elegant and intelligent, she was the perfect companion for a newspaperman moving in important international circles. After her husband’s death, she continued to travel — going alone on holiday visits to London where her daughter Cynthia and her husband, the late Tarek Ben Halim and their children lived.

In New York, she was active in public school education, becoming a board member of the Public Education Association and was one of the founders of the New York city school volunteer program, now called the Learning Leaders. She was appointed a delegate to the New York State Conference on Education by Gov. Averill Harriman in 1955 and in 1956, Mayor Robert D. Wagner appointed her to the city Commission on Vocational Education. In 1986, New York city Mayor Edward Koch awarded her a Citation of Merit for “leadership and contribution to the School Volunteer Program.”

Always deeply respectful of the written word, she was an inveterate reader, even well into her later years, and, for some time, was a contributor to the New York Times Sunday Book Review. When her husband began writing his New York Times Op Ed Page columns, she would carefully go over them before they were submitted.

Art and literature always interested her and she worked for a time with the Museum of Modern Art. She was a member of the League of Women Voters and the Cosmopolitan Club of New York.

The Oakeses first rented from the Larsen family in Chilmark. Later their home was above Stonewall Beach. Island pastimes included enjoying the deep pine woods up-Island, which reminded her of Japan, preparing the scallops, bluefish or lobster she had bought from Betsy Larsen at the family fish market, browsing at the Chilmark Flea Market, and gatherings with such friends as the late Nan Werner at her Menemsha home. Although she was game about going sailing with her husband on Chilmark Pond, sailing was never a favorite pastime. Clambakes, on the other hand — of which at least one was held each season — were. In everything she did, she was a perfectionist.

After her husband’s death, she came infrequently to the Island, but was delighted when her daughter Cynthia and her son in law — both lovers of the Vineyard — built a Vineyard home of their own in a Mediterranean style that was reflective of her son in law’s birthplace in Libya, and had a garden on the roof. It replaced the family summer cottage.

She is survived by her children, Andra N. Oakes of Washington, D.C., Allison H. Oakes of Glencoe, Ill., Cynthia J. Oakes of London, England, and John G.H. Oakes of New York city and eight grandchildren.

A service for family members was held Nov. 25 at Temple Emanu-El in New York, and a memorial service will be announced at a later date.

Donations in her memory may be made to Learning Leaders of New York at 8 Maiden Lane, New York, N.Y. 10038.