Marie David Hunt

parents: H. Duncan David (Major U.S. Army, Ret.) of Pineville, Louisiana, and Nancy Bernadette Rhorer David of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Marie was an award-winning journalist and feature writer at the Houston Chronicle from 1965 to 1969. She won the Headliners Club top prize for outstanding series in 1967. The award was presented at a formal dinner in Austin by Carol Channing. Marie also wrote for the Lake Charles American Press.

Marie attended the University of Houston where she graduated in 1961. After her classes at UofH, she worked in special events at what was then Foley’s department store in downtown Houston. She also modeled bridalwear for the popular Thursday night dinners at the fashionable dining spot the “Azalea Terrace.” She also recorded audio for the “Reading for the Blind” nonprofit organization.

Marie also attended McNeese State University in Lake Charles. She graduated high school from St. Charles Academy – also in Lake Charles – where she was valedictorian. During her time in Lake Charles, she performed in live commercials for a local supermarket sponsor of a weekly series on KPLC-TV, the local NBC affiliate.

Marie’s parents, both Louisiana natives, met while working for the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (a “New Deal” initiative during the 1930s Great Depression era) in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father, an officer who had retired from the United States Army following World War I, was recalled to active duty after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. During World War II, the young family was relocated to Columbia, South Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; and, finally, Jacksonville, Florida.

After the end of the war in 1945, Marie’s father was sent to occupied Italy, where he was responsible for directing financial disbursements to American personnel. After one year, Marie and her mother were finally able to reunite with him, joining other “dependents” (family members of active military personnel). The family returned to the U.S. in 1947.

Marie met David Gardiner Hunt, a geologist from New York, at an art exhibition at the now-defunct Meredith Long Galleries in Houston in 1967. They married in Houston in 1969 and moved to The Hague, Netherlands, where David, a Pennzoil employee, managed the international office of the Noordwinning Group, a North Sea exploration company. Throughout his entire career, David worked in international exploration on projects all over the world, and Marie often traveled with him. Marie also had the chance to visit her daughter Claire in Russia in 1998.

Back home in Houston, the couple welcomed daughters Amanda Eugenie in 1971 and Claire Chamard in 1975. In 1976, they moved to the Memorial Glen area of Houston. Forty-one years later, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and flooded their lovely home. Rather than expend time and money to restore the damaged house, they decided to move to a new property. Marie and David have resided in The Woodlands since 2017 – where they recently celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary.

Over the course of her journalism career, Marie had the privilege to meet and interview scores of celebrities. Among her “faves”: the beautiful Ann Miller, the Texas-born singer-dancer with the skin of an angel; the incomparably charming Kirk Douglas, while vacationing with his wife and two youngest sons in Mexico; and Nancy Reagan, at home in L.A. (which she and then Governor Ronald Reagan preferred to Sacramento). Marie cherished the English language and abhorred its misuse, especially of the verbs “to lie” (“to recline”) and “to lay” (“to put or place”). Good grammar, everybody!

Marie is predeceased by her father, mother, and sister Anne. She is survived by her husband David Gardiner Hunt; her daughter Amanda Eugenie Hunt Bellinger, her husband Mark Olin Bellinger, and their daughter Annmarie Hunt Bellinger of Falls Church, Virginia; and her daughter Claire Chamard Hunt of The Woodlands, Texas.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Down Syndrome Association of Northern Virginia (DSANV.org) in honor of Marie Hunt, grandmother of Annmarie Hunt Bellinger.