Memory Care HERstory

My name is Julie Mawby, and I’m the memory care director at Vitalia Active Adult Community – Solon. In honor of Women’s History Month, I want to take a moment to celebrate Mary Pat, one of our neighborhood residents! 

Mary Pat grew up in Wilkes-Barre. Upon graduating from high school, she attended the College of Misericordia in Dallas, Pennsylvania, where she studied English and Education. After college, she married her loving husband, Joseph. Shortly after they wed, Joseph was shipped out with the Navy, and Mary Pat made her way to New Jersey, where she found a teaching job at a local high school and was able to live with family.

After Joseph returned from overseas, he and Mary Pat moved first to Atlanta, Georgia and then to Virginia Beach for Joseph’s Navy career, where Mary Pat worked at local high schools teaching English. In Virginia Beach, Mary Pat was the first teacher in the history of their school who was allowed to continue teaching while pregnant. She and Joseph went on to have three children, Stacy, Paul and Lee. They continued to move for Joseph’s job to New York, St. Louis and Milwaukee, where Mary Pat continued to find teaching jobs at local high schools teaching either English or accounting and typing.

Throughout all of their moves, Mary Pat was dedicated to her students as well as her family, focusing a good amount of her time on her son, Lee, who is developmentally handicapped. Mary Pat and Joseph made their final move to South Carolina, where Mary Pat taught middle school English before retiring and starting a billing company for doctors with Joseph. In February, Mary Pat made her last move up to Cleveland, to be closer to her six grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Mary Pat continues to be dedicated to her family and treats everyone like her students, hoping to help those around her to learn and achieve something new each day.