Mary Louise Greene, 91, of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, formerly of Tifton, died March 14, 2009, in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Graveside memorial services will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 24, 2009, in Oak Ridge Cemetery. Dr. Bob Coleman will give a eulogy.
Ms. Greene was born on October 1, 1917 in Bainbridge and was the daughter of John Greene and Mary Trawick Greene. Her parents died when she was a child and her older sister, Eloise Greene, who was a college professor, brought up Mary Louise and her other sister and six brothers, sending them all through school. In a Methodist school in Macon, Mary Louise excelled in sports as well as academics.
She attended Winthrop College in South Carolina and, in 1939; she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a member of Playmakers. Mary Louise earned her Masters degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois the next year. She then taught high school in Charlotte, North Carolina.
When World War II broke out, she applied to join the Waves (Navy), but was not accepted because of poor eyesight. All of her brothers served in the military. Mary Louise went to work for the Government at the Lewis Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (predecessor of NASA) in Cleveland, Ohio, where she edited scientific research reports written by scientists and engineers. She received her law degree at Cleveland-Marshall Law School in 1957. She was in private practice I Cleveland for several years and then returned to work as a lawyer for the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D. C.
Mary Louise retired in the 1970s and moved to Tifton, where she lived in the house built by Almer and Pauline Kent at 508 W. 8th Street, where she cared for the house and garden with her friend, Katherine Kent (known as “Beebe”). In 1985, she moved to an ocean-front home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. She enjoyed a long and eventful life.
Mary Louise loved travel, reading, music and art. She traveled widely, visiting every state in the U. S. except Alaska and was looking forward to going there. She traveled by car in Mexico and Canada, as well as England, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain.
Mary Louise is survived by a number of nephews and nieces. She considers her next of kin to be her beloved nephew, Woody Greene, who resides in Florida and North Carolina.