Mary Lou (Parsley) Wade, master gardener, world traveler, Shakespeare aficionado, loving mother, and generous friend, died on March 17, 2021 at Discovery Commons at Wildewood in California, MD., one day after her 92nd birthday. Mary Lou had resided in her woods and gardens in Ruffs Dale, PA for 50 years before dementia necessitated her transition to supported living.
Mary Lou was born March 16, 1929 in Smithville, TN and earned a BS in biology at Middle Tennessee State College. As a new teacher in 1950, she took her first job in a one-room schoolhouse in Wellborn, FL. She married Thomas Earl McKeithen Jr. in 1951 and had three children. Thomas died of an accident and the young widow moved her family back to Smithville in 1955 and then on to Oak Ridge, TN, where she worked as a chemist with Union Carbide at the Oak Ridge nuclear facility.
Mary Lou met E. Eugene Wade at the Unitarian Church in Oak Ridge, under the influence of her three and Eugene’s one child deciding that their parents should meet. They married in 1961 and added two more children to the family, moving to Westmoreland County PA in 1968. They were married until Eugene’s 1992 death. The next span of retirement years was spent in hobby farming in Ruffs Dale with Ray Spara, her life partner of the next 25 years.
Mary Lou was an active member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Smithton, a church that will celebrate its sesquicentennial of continuous service next year. This liberal religious community was sustaining for Mary Lou and her family; as the years passed, Mary Lou became a church matriarch with her friend Liz Anderson, assuming the mantle from the generations of women before them. She was also involved with the Greensburg YWCA; audited University of Pittsburgh literature classes as a senior citizen; served as a docent at Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory; traveled widely; and avidly attended dramatic and musical performances. She also could pound anyone at Scrabble and score 400 points in a bad game.
Mary Lou is preceded in death by her spouses and her siblings Warren Parsley, Jean Parsley Washer Nicely, and Paul Parsley. She is survived by her children and their spouses: Thomas Wade, Kathie Wade, Paul Wade (Kristina Chong-Tenn), Nancy Wade (Frank Scott), Gena Wade (Marsha Misenhimer), and M. Kyla Rambin (Jon). Her grandchildren are Jonathan Wade, Jennifer Keehn, Eli Wade-Scott, Nathan Wade-Scott, Raissa Bacon, Rhianne Bacon, and Deanna Zacharia, with two great-grandchildren Athena Keehn and Leo Wade. Two children of the heart will especially grieve this loss: Brenda Jean Searcy and Paul Spara.
A service to celebrate Mary Lou’s life will be held at the Smithton church when assembling is safe again, in late spring or early summer. Remembrances of Mary Lou may take the form of donations to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Smithton, PO Box 568, Smithton PA 15479.
Smithville Review
(Smithville, Tenn)
