Fitje L. 'Binnie' Pitts

The longtime Roland Park resident worked for the Red Cross in World War II and was decorated for her service.

At the end of the war, she was in Belgium and wrote of driving to the Russian front near today's Czech Republic. She picked up parachute silk, which she donated to a local monastery. The nuns made her a set of pajamas, which she saved. She also claimed 70 gallons of cognac, which she shared with her base.

After the war, she married Tilghman G. Pitts Jr., an insurance executive, and moved to Baltimore. She raised three sons and was a longtime volunteer at Union Memorial Hospital and at Children's Hospital, where she had been women's board president.

"She would come up with the funniest, most unexpected things," said Susan Rittenhouse, a friend. "There was never a boring time around her. She herself was not bored with her life."

Mrs. Pitts was active at the Maryland SPCA and was a founding member of the Smith College Club's annual book sale. She also sold clothes for many years at the old Helen Dugan Boyce Dress Shop on Cold Spring Lane and The Wardrobe on Wyndhurst Avenue.

"She was a compulsive needlepointer and knitter," her son said. "Growing up, I never owned a sweater that she didn't make."

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. David's Episcopal Church, 4700 Roland Ave., where she helped run a nearly new shop.

Survivors include two other sons, Tilghman G. Pitts III and Stephen M. Pitts, both of Princeton, N.J.; and six grandchildren. Her husband of 25 years died in 1974.