Mary Russell Oleson
SACO — Mary Russell Oleson, who considered herself a lifelong globetrotter, died of complications related to dementia on Octo. 18 in Towson, Maryland. She was 87.
Mary was born on Aug. 15, 1935, in Guangzhou, China, where her father, Robert Russell, worked for the First National City Bank of New York. Family lore reports that Robert sent a cable to his parents, Walter and Winifred Russell of Gorham, Maine, announcing Mary’s birth on Aug. 15. His mother replied that the telegram arrived on Aug. 14 EST, “before Mary was born!” The new family lived there, as well as in Singapore and Manila, for five years before returning to the parents’ home state of Maine. A year later the bank sent her father to Shanghai — without the family — where the Japanese eventually interned him in a camp in Pudong. He was repatriated two years later after which he continued to work abroad. While their father was posted to various cities in Japan, Mary and her only sibling, Ralph, lived in Saco, Maine, with their mother, a teacher in the local public schools. For high school Mary went to Thornton Academy in Saco, graduating in 1952. Thanks to Barbara Renell, Bertha’s good friend and teaching colleague, Mary and Ralph spent many childhood summers at Barbara’s cottage on Thomas Pond in Raymond, Maine. Mary and Ralph also spent a portion of their summers visiting their father in Japan.
Mary attended Wellesley College where her aunt, Helen Russell, chaired the mathematics department. While there, she roomed in Severance dormitory and enjoyed rowing on winning crews and producing plays as president of the Shakespeare Society. She graduated in 1956 with a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics. Mary often referred to her time at Wellesley as among the best years of her life and made close friendships there that lasted the rest of her life. One friend, her then roommate, Merle Golden Bogin, arranged the date at which Mary met John Oleson, her future husband. He proposed to her two years later by mail to Stockholm, where she was doing graduate work, and in 1957 they were married in Saco. They then lived for a year in Chicago, Mary working as a statistician and John as a lawyer. The following spring, they moved to Washington, D.C., where he began work in the State Department and she began her eventual 30-year career with the Coast and Geodetic Survey (now NGS).
In the 1960s, John was posted to Bilbao, where their daughter Lisa was born; to Mexico City, where their son Neil was born; and to Bogotá, where their son Eric was born. In Bogotá, Mary taught math at the American school and helped a young Peace Corps volunteer with his plan to create a women’s cottage industry making knit Irish-fisherman-type sweaters in the suburb of Ciudad Kennedy. In the 1970s, the family lived in Paraguay, Bolivia, Egypt, and Honduras, where John served as director or deputy director of the USAID mission and where Mary continued to teach math in American schools, organized social functions related to John’s diplomatic work, and joined women’s groups doing charity work.
In 1981, they returned to their home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Mary went back to her job at NGS. The Survey sent her to take courses at the University of Maryland in College Park, as a result of which she obtained a bachelor’s of science degree in Computer Science in 1986 and became an IT specialist at NGS. As a feminist, she said she liked to think that, in the process of studying and working in the field of IT at that time, she was doing her small part in adding cracks to the “glass ceiling.”
In 2000, she and John moved to Baltimore to be near their daughter and her husband, Brendan Meagher, and their sons, Declan and Finnian. Soon thereafter, she became a volunteer Democratic Party activist and continued as such to the end of her life. She retired from NGS in 2007 and, although she would continue to miss her work and colleagues at the Silver Spring offices, she soon traded her coding skills for memoir writing, researching her family history, and creating detailed scrapbooks to accompany her writing. She often said that she always thought of her life as a series of adventures — with both new experiences and new challenges. Indeed, throughout their retirement, she and John continued their globetrotting adventures, domestically and abroad. They were also avid patrons of the theatre, both in New York City and the D.C. area, and of concerts and museums. Whenever she could, Mary attended her Wellesley class reunions and became a devoted donor to the Davis Museum of Art there. She often combined those reunions trips with travel back to visit her relatives in Maine. Most of all, she enjoyed following the activities of her beloved grandsons, including a third, Jasper Davenport, born in 2008.
Mary has been preceded in death by: her parents, her brother, Ralph Russell, a longtime resident of Tenant’s Harbor and Stockton Springs, and her husband. She is survived by: her children, her grandsons, and her nephew, Nathan Russell of Owl’s Head, Maine. Her remains will be interred with those of her husband at the DACOR section of St. Paul’s Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. A celebration of her life will be held at a later date to be determined. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Wellesley College or to a charity of your choice.
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