Weaver, Mary Lois (1919-2003)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2003 Mar 31 p. 8

Birth date: 1919 Jan 3

text of obituary:

MARY LOIS WEAVER

Mary Lois Weaver, 84, of Waldron Island, Wash., died Feb. 25, 2003, of multiple myeloma. She was born Jan. 3, 1919, to Mark and Effie (Miller) Bender in Grantsville, Md.

She grew up in Casselman Valley of southwestern Pennyslvania. Her extended family were people of Mennonite and Amish tradition, who were a strong and sustaining influence upon her life.

She attended Goshen (Ind.) College, where piano study became her primary interest. She married Robert F. Weaver of Goshen on June 25, 1941. They lived in Oregon, Pennsylvania and Indiana, and first moved to Waldron Island in 1955. Ten years later she graduated from Western Washington State College.

She loved music of many kinds, loved to make music on the piano and to sing. She was knowledgeable about the natural world and was particularly interested in birds, mushrooms, astronomy and plants, both wild and cultivated. She was an insatiable reader. Until illness intervened, she daily walked miles on the roads of Waldron.

She taught Head Start in Mount Vernon, Wash., kindergarten in Friday Harbor, second grade in Neah Bay on the Makah Indian Reservation and all grades in Waldron's one-room schoolhouse for 15 years.

Survivors include her husband, Robert; three children, Nellie Habegger of Lost Prairie, Ore., and Anna Scruton and Chris Weaver of Waldron; two sisters, Bernice Bartholomew of Albuquerque, N.M., and Anne Johnson of Fort Worth, Texas; seven grandchildren and a great-grandchild. She was preceded in death by a son, Andy, in 1990.

Burial was in the Waldron cemetery by her family.