Mary Louise Donnelly Gray

“It is impossible for me to say — to begin to say — all that has gone down into the grave with her. She was our life, she was the house, she was the keystone of the arch. She held us all together, and without her we are scattered reeds. She was patience, she was wisdom, she was exquisite maternity. Her sweetness, her mildness, her great natural beneficence were unspeakable, and it is infinitely touching to me to write about her here as one that was.” Novelist Henry James remembering his mother, Mary Robertson Walsh James. Mary Louise Josephine Donnelly Gray, widow, mother of nine children and grandmother of eighteen, died at age 94 on July 10, 2023, in Falls Church, VA. In order of emphasis during her life: she was a Mother/Wife, Artist, political defender of Life and a professional model. She was born September 26, 1928 at Misericordia Hospital in West Philadelphia. She was the second child (her older brother John, known as Jack, was born in 1926) and only daughter of her father John Desmond Donnelly, a financier who attended Penn’s Wharton School, and her mother Mary Beatrice McGinnis Donnelly. Both parents were Philadelphians. Mary Lou grew up in metro Philadelphia. She lived in Drexel Hill, Overbrook, West Philadelphia and Wynnewood while attending Catholic schools there. She also went to public school in both Brooklyn and Queens, where she and her beloved brother Jack used to watch aircraft taking off and landing at the new La Guardia Airport during the 1930s. Her father was a commodities broker for McFadden and Company. Mary Lou's father was transferred back to Philadelphia in 1942. She went to high school for one year at Sacred Heart Academy on Haverford Road in the city, then finished high school at West Catholic for Girls, graduating in 1947. Her late brother Jack served in World War II with the US Army as an MP. Jack guarded Nazi war criminals at the 1946 Nuremberg Trials. Mary Lou’s exceptional Celtic attractive features of blue eyes, electrifying smile, and a petite figure enabled her to model for Eileen Ford’s new modeling Agency in Manhattan. Among her many modeling credits, Mary Lou appeared in Vogue and Life magazines. By her early 20s, she moved to Miami and lived with her brother Jack where he attended the University of Miami. She first traveled to Florida by train to visit Jack and her beloved "Aunt Josie" (Josephine McGinnis McGettigan) and Uncle Ferdinand McGettigan who had acted as her surrogate parents when her parents separated. Her Aunt Josie and Uncle Ferd managed a tavern in Miami Beach after managing a successful restaurant in Center City Philadelphia for two decades. She served as Managing Editor for E.B. White’s secretary at THE NEW YORKER for six months during the salad era of William Shawn, Brendan Gill, Vladimir Nabokov, Eudora Welty, J.D. Salinger, John Hersey, and E.J. Kahn Jr. She liked “Mr. White” but disliked his wife Katharine and most of her fellow employees. She quit the THE NEW YORKER to work for, respectively, the MIAMI HERALD newspaper, a Manhattan travel agency, and as a flight attendant for National Airlines. She married her husband, Michael Gray, on January 3, 1953, after meeting him at her Uncle Ferd’s Miami Beach tavern in 1951. Her husband Mike was a thoroughbred horse trainer who mostly raced in Florida, Illinois and Kentucky. As a practicing Catholic, Mary Lou and her brother Jack met and talked with then Monsignor Fulton Sheen in 1942 in Center City, Philadelphia and she was influenced by that chance encounter. Because her childhood was difficult, she vowed she would have many children and give her children a happy childhood. Mary Lou’s first child, daughter Priscilla; she bore eight children in less than ten years: identical twins Christopher and Daniel; daughter Suzanne; son Robert; son Patrick; daughter Mary Josephine; son Michael and son Peter. During the Sixties, Mary Lou somehow managed to: take college art classes in drawing and oil painting; served on her children's Catholic school board; began her longtime political involvement with the Republican Party; and began reading extensively in history, literature and art while simultaneously managing a huge household, often alone for 40% of the year due to Dad’s need to follow the racing circuit. With three teenaged children by August 1969, both Mike and Mary Lou realized he simply had to be around more due to the children needing full-time parental guidance. They decided to move to Louisville, Kentucky. That meant Mike would be around the children twelve months a year since Kentucky held year-round horse racing. Mary Lou's favorite house was her Cape Cod house on Blankenbaker Lane in suburban Louisville, purchased in October 1970. The home on Blankenbaker was three houses down from the historic 1790 Locust Grove Federal plantation home built by the Croghan family and located on the bluffs overlooking the Ohio River. Locust Grove was visited by Presidents Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson and Taylor and Chief Justice John Marshall since it was the last home of Revolutionary war hero George Rogers Clark, brother of explorer William Clark. President Zachary Taylor grew up a mile from Locust Grove and attended primary school there. Mary Lou was an early advocate for Ronald Reagan and worked on his primary campaign in spring 1976 because of his pro-Life position and would continue to work for Reagan in 1980. She was Republican precinct captain for her neighborhood for a decade. She continued her art classes with renowned watercolorist Keith Spears in Louisville and added watercolors to her repertoire of paintings and sketches. As a professional artist, she sold several paintings, mostly watercolors during the decades. She visited her ancestral Ireland with her daughters, and toured Sicily with her husband Mike. Later she would travel through western Europe with her husband admiring the great works of art. She is survived by her nine children: Priscilla, Christopher, Daniel, Suzanne, Robert (Vonda), Patrick (Anila), Josephine (Steve), Michael (Helen) and Peter (Megan) as well as her eighteen grandchildren: Laura, Andrew, Gwendolyn Elise, Timothy, Aidan, Ana, Teddy, Caroline, Justin, Charlie, Tommy, Nicholas, Emma, Dominic, Julia, Joey, Nathaniel, and Henry.