Mary Rose Richardson lights up any room she enters.  She loves people and life so she connects wherever she goes.  Even at 98, she brings the weekly Bingo game to life and reaches out to people, pets and kids.

She started her journey (1925) in Ottawa, Canada with her older brother Peter and her parents, Rose and Harrie Richardson.  The family moved to Flushing New York when she was two, following Harrie’s career.  Mary has good memories of the many kids in that city scape.  At roughly ten years, she took it upon herself to invite the whole neighborhood gang to her birthday without telling her mother until the night before.  Rose met the challenge and a festive birthday was had.

When the family moved to Lincoln MA (again following Harrie’s career) they lived in a sprawling farm house.  Mary was a preteen but made friends quickly and was singled out to join a choir.  Later in life, singing in the First Parish Choir in Concord would be a particular joy.

The Lincoln students were channeled to Concord at High School and it was there in a Math class that she first saw Bill Anderson.  She was struck and found a way through her brother and his friends to connect with Bill.  He was reserved, she was not, but they dated and ultimately married as WWII was winding down. The couple had four children:  Ken, Bill, Pooky and Libby.

Mary loved the years of raising children which she did in an energetic and laissez faire style with a dash of discipline.  With plenty of kids in the neighborhood and Emerson Playground right around the corner, Mary loved to initiate pick-up baseball games.  The Hubbard Street home was located between the schools and downtown so there was always a parade of extra school friends.  Mary oversaw a fun, if not completely organized, home.  All the while, she was a notable golf and bridge player.

In late middle age, as Bill fought cancer, Mary took a job at Brandeis and simultaneously took classes toward the bachelors degree she had abandoned during the war.  She thrived in both school and  job.  She was the liaison between the Board of Trustees and the College President as well as the Executive Administrator of the Brandeis Arts Award Program which found her in the company of famous artists, writers, sculptors, etc.  At age 68, Mary graduated from college. At the same time, she became a widow after caring for Bill for nearly a decade.

Mary wrote a new and different chapter in her life when she married Romey Everdell who had also raised four children in Concord.  Like Bill, Romey was an honorable, understated man though his politics were more aligned with Mary. The couple traveled the world but lived at Lewis Wharf in Boston where Mary, true to form, quickly gathered a coterie of friends.  For a second time, Mary nursed a husband through years of sickness, this time Alzheimer’s. Though she has dementia, the caring, humor filled personality is still very much present.