Mary Douglas

8/4/1920 — 1/11/2021

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Mary E. Douglas, 100, of Lewiston, died Monday, Jan. 11, 2021, at Royal Plaza Health and Rehabilitation Center in Lewiston.

She was born Aug. 4, 1920, in Philadelphia, to Ida Mae Kunkel and Nelson Jay.

Mary and her family lived on a farm in Evansville, Pa., until she was 5 years old, when her family moved to Philadelphia for her brother to start school.

Her dad worked at the post office for four years and purchased a “nice” home with three bedrooms, one for him and his wife, another for the family’s boys and the third for the girls.

The modest prosperity the family achieved evaporated when the Depression started and her dad lost his job. To feed the family, he sold apples and oranges on street corners.

He got his job back when the economy recovered, but the family never fully rebounded from the setback. They lost the home they owned and lived in a series of rentals.

She attended several schools in her childhood and, because of the lack of income in the family, she left school in the ninth grade to find work.

Mary found work at a carpet factory where she placed yarn onto smaller spools before it went into a weaving machine. Her brother and sister-in-law also worked at the plant until they decided to quit together.

Her next job was managing a luncheonette at a pharmacy, where she ordered the ingredients for the soups and sandwiches on the menu and served the customers.

One night when she returned from work, her family was having a birthday party for one of her brothers, who brought three sailors to the gathering. She ended up meeting one of the sailors and ended up marrying Joseph Douglas in 1943 during World War II.

After the war, they settled in Oklahoma where he worked as a bookbinder and she was a homemaker, raising their two boys. The family later moved to Washington, D.C., where Joseph worked at the Government Printing Office, until his career was cut short after suffering a heart attack.

Joseph died in 1977 at the age of 63.

Mary lived in the same towns as her oldest son, Joseph Douglas Jr., who worked as the chief information officer and director of information and media technology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Her son retired to Clarkston in 2004 and she lived in her own apartment there before moving to Brookdale and then later to Royal Plaza.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Joseph Sr.; her parents; two grandchildren; and several brothers and sisters.

Mary is survived by her sons, Joseph Jr. and John Douglas; two grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; seven great-great-grandchildren; and a sister.

A celebration of life will be held in Broken Arrow, Okla., later in the spring or summer when travel restrictions because of COVID-19 will allow for it.

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