Mary Louise Waters, lifelong resident of Newton Centre, MA and former chairman of the Foreign Language Department at Newton North High School, died on June 20, 2008 at D’Youville Nursing Home in Lowell, MA at the age of 94. She was the daughter of Mary Frances English Waters and William Waters and cousin to the late Gertrude English with whom she had lived her entire life. She is survived by her cousins, Susan L’Italien of Westford, MA, Lois Ward of Watertown, MA, and Carol Zalis of Derry, NH.
Mary was born in Newton Center on May 15, 1914, and educated in Newton Schools. She earned a Batchelor’s degree at Radcliffe College in 1935. She went on to earn a Master’s degree at Harvard University. Thanks to a teaching fellowship she spent the following year at the Sorbonne in Paris and then spent a year teaching English in Southern France. After five years holding teaching positions in several small school systems in Massachusetts, she returned to Newton North High School where she spent the remainder of her teaching career
One of the rewards of her work was the opportunity for extensive travel. As a recipient of scholarships from the Fulbright Commission and the Ford Foundation, she revisited Europe multiple times and crossed the United States more than a dozen times.
Teaching was demanding and Mary always looked forward to her summers. One summer she taught in Beverly Hills, California and another she spent with a group of Fulbright recipients studying in Paris and still other summers she spent traveling in Europe and the United States. As the years passed, thanks to grants from the Ford Foundation and the John Hay Whitney Foundation, she was able to leave teaching for two years to work as a consultant for the publishers Ginn and Company. She wrote two French text books and subsequently two work books for Houghton Mifflin Co. As chairman of the Foreign Language Department at Newton North High School she had the satisfaction of working with a dedicated group of teachers who shared her ideas on education.
After retirement Mary still found much to see and do. Music, church work, photography and cooking were just a few of the activities that took up her attention. Living so close to Boston and Cambridge, it was never difficult for her to find something interesting to do. She belonged to numerous clubs and organizations and she traveled extensively, even to China. Mary even earned a broker’s license to sell real estate but never had the time to use it.Mary was a lifelong parishioner of Sacred Heart Church in Newton, the church built by her grandfather, Arthur I English. A mass will be said at Sacred Heart Church on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 10:00. Burial will be immediately following at St Joseph Cemetery in West Roxbury.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the D’Youville Senior Care Center, 981 Varnum Ave, Lowell, MA 01854. Arrangement by the Eaton and Mackay Funeral home 465 Centre St, Newton Corner. www.eatonandmackay.com