Roberta J. Davidson

Roberta Knutson Davidson, 100, a registered nurse and long-time resident of Easton, Maryland, died peacefully December 26, 2025 in Lewes, Delaware. Her children were at her side. Her husband of 64 years, Reid Davidson, died in 2012.

A celebration-of-life service is being planned at the First Presbyterian Church in Easton. Roberta served in Lutheran churches in Minnesota, South Dakota and Maryland, in a Methodist church in New York, and in Presbyterian churches in Maryland. She taught Sunday school and vacation Bible school, advised a Luther League chapter, led a ladies’ prayer circle and sang in several church choirs.

Roberta married Reid Davidson on September 12, 1948 in her hometown of Pipestone, Minnesota. They met on a blind date in the summer of 1946, when he was on his way home to New York after the U.S. Navy discharged him in California.

Roberta had a 37-year career as a registered nurse in Minnesota, New York, South Dakota and Maryland. A labor and delivery nurse in Maryland for 16 years, she was endlessly proud of having cared for thousands of mothers and newborns.

Born April 17, 1925 in Madison, South Dakota, Roberta Jean was the first of nine children born to Imogene Duke Knutson and Robert John Knutson Sr. After a year at South Dakota State College in Brookings, she enrolled in the national Nurse Cadet Program and, in March 1948, graduated from the Abbott School of Nursing in Minneapolis.

Roberta was a visiting nurse in Albany in the late 1940s, a nurse in a doctor’s office in small-town South Dakota in the 1950s, and a nurse (maternity, occupational health) at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station hospital in St. Mary’s County, Maryland from 1961 until her retirement in 1985. She sewed dolls, doll clothes and plush toys for her grandchildren, repaired dolls and stuffed animals for donation to her church nursery, and grew her own collection of several hundred dolls and books about dolls.

Grateful for Roberta’s presence in their lives are her son, Jan Reid Davidson, of Lewes; her daughter, Ann Davidson Haught (John), of Milton; three grandchildren, Marisa Nash (Jeremy) of Havertown, PA, Elisa Davidson (Thomas Bonner) of Wyncote, PA, and Troy Kozak of St. Louis; and seven great-grandchildren, John Soeffing, Samuel Soeffing and Lochlan Nash of Havertown, PA, and Carmen, Giselle, Luisa and Ray Bonner of Wyncote, PA.

Roberta is survived by her sister Ann Knutson of Easton; sisters-in-law Gretchen Schaefer Knutson of Highlands Ranch, CO and Patricia Sol Erington of Lenexa, KS; and 18 nieces and nephews in Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawai’i, Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada and South Dakota.

Roberta was preceded in death by seven siblings, Marjorie Becker and Donald Knutson of Honolulu, Alice Knutson of Brookings, Robert Knutson Jr. of Rapid City, SD, Steven Knutson of Longmont, CO, Warren Knutson of Overland Park, KS, and Lawrence Knutson of Pipestone; her sisters-in-law Patricia McNeeley Knutson and Ann Elizabeth Simon Knutson; a brother-in-law, George Becker of Honolulu; a daughter-in-law, Evelyn Holdridge Davidson of Lewes; and a former son-in-law, Steven Kozak of St. Louis.

Arrangements are by the Thomas Funeral Home in Cambridge, Maryland.

Anyone making a charitable donation in Roberta’s name may consider giving to youth and children’s programs at the Presbyterian Church of Easton, 617 North Washington Street, Easton, MD 21601, or to a rescue squad, volunteer fire department or other service organization in their own community.