Mary Suzanne Grossman

She was born on March 10, 1932, to Nell Brasher of Clovis, New Mexico, who was then residing at the Deaconess Home of Redeeming Love in Oklahoma City. Shortly after her birth, she was adopted by Bernard and Eula Brown of Oklahoma City, and her name was changed from Mary Ellen to Mary Suzanne. Dubbed “Mary Sue,” she was extremely bright, and was advanced a year during grade school. She also pleased her teachers by developing perfect penmanship, although her careful rendering of each letter would later be frustrating to her children who were waiting for her to complete grocery lists or notes to their teachers.

Her father’s work brought the family to Lakewood, Ohio, outside Cleveland, for many years before they returned to Oklahoma City, where she attended Classen High School. After slogging through the snowdrifts of northern Ohio winters, Mary and her younger brother, John, were forever amused by the inability of Oklahomans to deal with the comparatively light and infrequent dustings of snow here.

After graduating from Classen in 1949, Mary moved on to the University of Oklahoma, where she majored in Psychology and became the first in her family to receive a bachelor’s degree. While at OU, she met Stan Grossman, point guard for the basketball team, and one of the many New Yorkers forced to attend college in the Midwest because colleges in the East were filled with returning war veterans. They married on January 31, 1953, and after a weekend honeymoon at the Trade Winds Inn in Tulsa, Mary moved to Virginia to be near her husband, who was stationed at Ft. Belvoir with the Army Corp of Engineers before being sent to Korea shortly after the cease-fire in July 1953.

After her husband’s return and discharge from the Army, they bought their first home on N.W. 13th Street, west of Meridian. Two canvas “butterfly” chairs were all the furniture they owned when they first moved into their new home. Her son, Mark, was born in August 1957, and her daughter, Jennifer, was born in June 1959, and she focused on raising her children, first in Oklahoma City and then in Norman where the family moved in 1962. After her children left home, she returned to college to take accounting courses, and went to work for her husband’s company, Grossman & Keith Engineering, for many years until retirement.

In deference to her adoptive mother’s feelings, she waited until her adoptive mother had died in 1993 before attempting to learn more about her birth mother. She eventually found her birth parents, but not before both had passed away. She spent many years enthusiastically engaged in genealogical research about her birth family. She traced their roots back to South Carolina before the Revolutionary War, and discovered ancestors from the Creek and Chickasaw tribes in Alabama. The Internet became a treasured resource, where she could also indulge her affections for collecting “easy” recipes, sewing advice, and gadgets of all sorts. Her love and pride for her grandchildren was often expressed through her efforts to polish and perfect the many digital photos she took of them as they grew from infants to adults.

After her husband died in October 2011, Mary began a long gradual decline physically, but she remained razor-sharp mentally until the last weeks before her death. Her family thanks her devoted caretakers over the past few years of her life, Phyllis Madden, Kelly McNew, and Kimmie Baker, and the home nurse, Molly Ross-Metheny, who first helped care for her husband in the last year of his life, and then helped care for her over the seven years following her husband’s death. They made her final years at home more comfortable and peaceful.

Mary is survived by her son, Mark, of Oklahoma City, her daughter, Jennifer, of Norman, her daughter-in-law, Cynthia Brundige, her grandchildren, Kathryn, Steven, and Mallory, her brother and sister-in-law, John and Joanna Brown of Katy, Texas, and her nephews, Wade and Wes Brown. Family and friends are invited to celebrate her life at a memorial gathering at Primrose Funeral Service, 1109 North Porter Ave., Norman, on Friday, September 21, 2018, beginning at 2 p.m. In recognition of the assistance provided by the Deaconess Home in bringing Mary into this world, the family asks that contributions be made in her memory to the Hope Fund at what is now known as Deaconess Pregnancy and Adoption Services, at www.deaconessadoption.org/campaigns/hope-fund/. The Hope Fund supports counseling services for birth parents, adoptive families, and adoptees who are experiencing the anxieties and emotional issues often associated with separation and adoption.