Verna Kerans Edleson, who entertained as a member of an all-girl band that called itself the Musical Pirates, has died at 103.

Maryville University said she apparently had been the school's oldest living graduate.

Mrs. Edleson died Sunday (July 25, 2010) at Bethesda Dilworth in Oakland, two weeks after suffering a stroke, her son said Wednesday.

She played the violin and became a professional violinist in 1937, when she became a dues-paying member of the American Federation of Musicians. She proudly carried a union card the rest of her life.

During the 1930s and 1940s, she donned pirate garb to play for the Musical Pirates, said to be one of the country's first all-female musical groups.

The band of five to seven women was organized by Lucia Pamela, mother of Georgia Frontiere, the late owner of the Rams, and grandmother of one of the current owners, Lucia Rodriguez.

The Musical Pirates played throughout the Midwest. They were heard on radio station KMOX and appeared here at the Chase Park Plaza and the Missouri Athletic Club.

A yellowed publicity photo from that era shows the women in costumes styled from a swashbuckling Errol Flynn movie.

The Musical Pirates started as a novelty act.

"They were beautiful women dressed as pirates," Lucia Pamela's grandson said in a recent interview with the Riverfront Times. "But people would come to watch them perform because they were extremely talented musicians."

Mrs. Edleson also appeared with the old St. Louis Women's Symphony at Kiel Auditorium and with the St. Louis Philharmonic Orchestra.

Her parents met at the 1904 World's Fair. Her father owned a wholesale grocery business but made his money, according to family history, in the numbers game, an early version of the lottery.

Mrs. Edleson was reared in a 34-room mansion on West Pine Boulevard on the site now occupied by the Pius XII Library at St. Louis University.

She enrolled as a boarding student for high school in 1919 at what now is Maryville University; she stayed on to take college classes.

She expected to graduate in 1927, but the school expelled her after she sneaked out of the dorm to attend a dance. She had to repeat her junior year and graduated in 1928.

After her musical career, Mrs. Edleson turned to teaching. She taught third grade at Garfield School in the Normandy School District.

She outlived two husbands and a boyfriend. Her first husband, John Kerans, died in 1956; her second husband, Edward Edleson, died in 1991; and her longtime companion, Paul Vogel, died in 2007.

Visitation will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at St. John Nepomuk Church, 1625 South Eleventh Street. The funeral Mass will be at noon, with burial at Resurrection Cemetery.

Among the survivors are a daughter, Verna Kerans of Webster Groves; a son, John Kerans of Des Peres; eight grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.