Mary Ann Meade

03/02/1934 - 05/16/2025

Mary Ann Meade passed away peacefully on May 16, 2025, at the age of 91. She was born in Connersville, Indiana on March 2, 1934 as Mary Ann Dawson. Her parents were Paul Everett Dawson and May Geraldine Dawson (nee Brown). Mary lived in Connersville with her family until leaving for college at the University of Indiana in 1952. Her father passed away in 1950, when she was only 16. She was one of a short list of recipients of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search Prize, which provided a fellowship for university studies in science. Before leaving for college, she was interviewed by the Ladies Home Journal, which published a piece about her in April 1952. She majored in biology, and then pursued graduate work at Indiana in genetics, where she worked with Dr. Hermann Muller, who had received the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1946.
She met her future husband Guthrie (Gus) Turner Meade Jr. at a folk festival, and they were married in November 1955. While still at Indiana University, they had two boys, Douglas and Jonathan. Mary never finished her PhD. They moved to Springfield, Ohio in 1959, and then to Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1960, while Gus worked as a programmer at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Springfield. Their daughters Morag and Meredith were born while they were living in Yellow Springs. The family moved to the Washington, DC area in 1965 when Gus obtained a position at the Library of Congress.
Gus and Mary had a wide network of friends in the DC area, and frequently hosted fiddle, blues and folk musicians at house parties. Mary worked at the Alexandria Hospital, the Poison Center at Georgetown Hospital, and as a staffer for a Senator McIntyre of New Hampshire. After Gus retired, Mary, Gus and Jonathan moved to Frankfort, Kentucky, where they built a home on 180 acres of beautiful meadows and woods. Sadly, Gus passed away in February 1991, soon after they moved in to this house.
Mary and Jonathan continued living together until 2020, when Mary suffered an attack of dementia. Both Mary and Jonathan moved in with her son Douglas and his wife Birgit in 2022. Jonathan passed away in June 2023 of pancreatic cancer. Surviving members of the family are Morag and Douglas. Mary also has seven grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
Mary's personal interests included gardening, reading, cooking, antique collecting, and helping friends. She will always be remembered for that very special touch she brought to everything she did.
An informal memorial service will be held at the home of Douglas and Birgit Meade on June 8 at 3 p.m. The funeral will be in Swallowfield, Kentucky on July 5.