Mary Ashley Plunkett Freeman

1931 - 2024

Mary Ashley Plunkett Freeman died May 26, 2024 in Mantoloking, NJ. "Molly" was married for 62 years to her beloved, Robert Freeman who died in 2018. Together they danced in the aisles at the grocery store, teased and tickled each other in high hilarity, jousted over driving skills and the best way to handle strong emotion. She is remembered and loved by her five children, many in-laws, nine grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and a large extended family of cousins and friends. Born October 30, 1931 to Mary Ashley Gardner and Edmund Robert Plunkett, she was raised in Pelham, NY under the loving and watchful eyes of her brother Bob and the family caregiver, Sarah Motley Jones Green, both of whom she adored. She attended Baldwin School for Girls, '49, where she was passionately involved in the social justice and activism sponsored by David Richie's Work Camps. She lived in England from '49-'50, where she cemented her friendship with her lifelong friend, Terence Malinson. She graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College, '54, where she received an award for her thesis on housing and race in Philadelphia. While raising five young children, she completed her MSW at the University of Maryland in Baltimore in '76.

Over seven decades, she was deeply involved in All Souls Unitarian Church, where she sang in the choir, sold donuts, organized the caring table and worked on the Girard Street Playground, the archives, the Beckner Fund, and the preservation of Hiroshima children's drawings sent to All Souls post WWII. An organizer par excellence, she pushed for school desegregation in her Chevy Chase neighborhood, and worked to build the local Democratic party. She was active in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the '60s. You were better off if she was on your side. Molly was a passionate person with a wry and complex sense of humor and a laugh that started in her eyes and embraced those around her. Baldwin peers and teachers voted her "most dependable," and the faculty also voted her "most sarcastic."

Molly loved the Central Jersey Shore, especially sitting on the dune and gazing at the ocean. She corralled a child or grandchild to walk to "the house with the pointed roof" every day of every summer at Mantoloking. She and her mother shared a lifelong fascination with card games, detective stories, wordplay and crossword puzzles. She loved gardening and hated poison ivy, sewing, and the end of summer. In the last ten years of her life, despite her failing memory, she was able to recite wartime poetry, correct your Latin, and carry a firm alto line in songs from the full spectrum of the Great American Songbook. Memorial Service, October 6, 2024, at 2:30 p.m., All Souls Church, D.C. Donations in her memory to your local public library or to: WETA | Public Television and Classical Music for Greater Washington Friends of Island Beach State Park.