Mary Alice Yens

1942 - 2023

Yens - Mary Alice (Plichta) "Alice", was a loving, caring wife, mother, grandmother, and friend. She was also an engaging, intellectually brilliant and curious, and very well-read woman who led an interesting life, opting to forge a path different from many of her peers of the era. After a long and fulfilling life in which she touched so many with her warmth, kindness, and intelligence, she departed us on March 18, 2023, at 80 years old. Alice was born on August 9, 1942, to Ann and Joseph Plichta in Pittsburgh, PA. After graduating Catholic high school, she attended the University of Pittsburgh to pursue a BA degree in mathematics and history with a minor in education â€" the first in her family to go to college. Alice met David Peter Yens "Dave", 4 years her senior, a Masters in Education candidate and son of a pediatrician, on a blind date. They began dating from there and wed on June 29, 1963, beginning a loving marriage that lasted until she left us, almost 60 years. Alice and Dave spent many eventful years together before having children. They started their married lives together in Pittsburgh, PA, where she was a high school mathematics teacher. During their second year of marriage, they intrepidly took a cross-country road trip, camping along the way, to Los Angeles. Just prior to Dave's subsequent military service overseas, they moved to Fayetteville, NC, where Alice continued to teach high school. Following his return, they relocated to State College, PA. There, during Dave's graduate study at Penn State, Alice was employed by HRB Singer, a defense contractor, and was heavily recruited by the CIA (in part due to her knowledge of the Russian language and history) but turned them down. In State College, she gave birth to their first daughter, Diana. Dave's first faculty appointment took them to Newark, DE, where, as an active member of the League of Women Voters, she hosted then-Senator Joseph Biden and the Chinese table tennis team. She also had their second daughter, Laura. They next moved to Augusta, GA, where she was an active member of the PTA and several committees for voting, the arts, etc., and her third daughter, Sandra, was born. In 1980, they moved to Huntington, NY, where they have lived in the same house since, enjoying the view of Huntington Bay every day. Throughout her life, Alice was a dynamo of activity. For example, in Huntington, NY, she somehow managed to pursue her Masters in Mathematics at Stony Brook University while working a demanding full-time job as a software engineer at AIL Eaton (another defense contractor), raising her three children, and managing a household, and still, on weekends, bringing her children into museums in NYC, planning for and enlisting them in all-day preparations for a dinner with friends, or buying and planting annuals all over the yard. In her later years, after she retired from AIL Eaton, Alice returned to teaching high school and college mathematics, regularly babysat and doted on all of her grandchildren, and traveled with Dave including to Alaska, Italy, and England. Alice inspired all, but especially her children and grandchildren, to seek knowledge, challenge themselves, try new things, be resilient and self-reliant, but to also, always, lead with kindness, empathy, warmth and integrity. Her descendants are incredibly grateful for everything they learned from her and for her ever-present sense of humor and fun, they will continue to carry her light forward in the coming years and generations. In addition to her loving husband, Dave; Alice is survived by her brother, Thomas Plichta; her children, Diana Ann Yens, Laura Dorothea Yens, and Sandra Lee Yens; and her grandchildren, Gavin Joseph Yens McBride, Teagan Yens McBride, Ryan Alexander McDonald, and Emily Mara Yens Beltran. A memorial service celebrating Alice's life will be held at 3 pm on April 2, 2023, at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington, NY.