Mary Connor

Mary Arlene (Colbert) Connor, a retired travel agent with Connor Travel Agency, Inc., with her husband and business partner, the late Louis Gabriel Connor, died Tuesday. She was 95.

Born in the Somerville section of Boston she was the daughter of Thomas F. Colbert, of Colbert Brothers Coal, Co., and his wife, Helen M. Higgins. She and her 12 siblings, 3 sisters and 9 brothers, were raised in Somerville during the school year and, in the summers, at Manomet Beach on Cape Cod Bay.

A 1943 graduate of St. Clements High School in Somerville, she earned an Associate in Arts degree in business at Fisher Junior College in 1945. She began her career as secretary at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she excelled and was soon appointed executive assistant to the first director of MIT's famed Lincoln Laboratory. In 1952, she moved to Washington DC to accept an offer from the Department of the Navy. She also joined the Naval Reserve, the "WAVES" (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). This, she insisted, was out of pure patriotism and had nothing to do with opportunities to "hitch a ride home on a Navy plane for Boston College football games and Holidays."

She married Louis G. Connor in August 1953 and the couple started a family in Catonsville and soon opened Connor Travel Agency at 813 North Charles Street. Initially, she was both homemaker for their (eventually five) kids and bookkeeper for Connor Travel. As the children grew she became a full partner as office manager for the business and co-host of many large overseas group trips.

A devout Roman Catholic, Mary lived her faith in many ways. In the 1960s, enraged by racial discrimination in real estate "redlining" she volunteered for fair housing tests with Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc. She would take her three older sons to various garden apartments around Catonsville to help identify operations that would offer to rent to her but advised "no vacancies" when African-American volunteers inquired immediately before her visit. Later in life her activism only increased, focused on the Right to Life movement with her work at the Pregnancy Center in Towson, prayer demonstrations at GBMC and Planned Parenthood, and the annual pro-life march in Washington DC.

The family moved to Lutherville in 1969. Always frugal, her son Jo said, "she couldn't pass a yard sale without a sense of regret for bargains that might've been." She was an ardent supporter of her kids, not a passive, social spectator – and often by far the loudest cheering voice in many high-school bleachers.

Beginning in the late 1970s, the couple enjoyed time on the Eastern Shore in Bozman, Maryland, near St. Michaels.

A Funeral Mass will be held at Church of the Resurrection in Ellicott City at 11am on October 21, 2020.

Her daughter, Mary Helen Wimmer died in 2000. In addition to her four surviving children; Louis (Lee) G. Connor of Ellicott City, J. Stephen Connor of Lancaster, PA, Joseph T. Connor of Ellicott City, and James F. Connor of Phoenix, MD, survivors include two sisters, Sr. Helen Thomas Colbert SSJ, of Boston and Helen C. Conroy of Guilford, CT, 14 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Instead of flowers, the family asks that donations be sent to Maryland Right to Life.