After a difficult battle with Alzheimer’s, Mary Anna McNamara Malich passed away November 4, 2025 at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Oxford, MS, with her daughter at her side.
Mary Anna was born Oct. 28, 1939 in Ridgewood, New Jersey, to Zita Nolan and John E. McNamara. Mary Anna, as well as her two older sisters, Mary Zita and Mary Patricia, all attended Catholic grammar school and high school in Ridgewood. After graduating from St. Michael’s College of the University of Toronto, where she studied art and architecture, Mary Anna met William A. Fennelly one summer afternoon at the Jersey Shore. They wed and settled in Cranford, New Jersey, where she gave birth to two daughters, Julie and Beth Ann. After several years, Bill was transferred to the Chicago area and the family settled in Lake Forest, Illinois, though for decades no summer was complete without a week’s vacation at the Jersey Shore.
Mary Anna was deeply involved in her daughters’ education at the School of St. Mary and piloted a volunteer program called “Picture Lady,” in which she would bring an iconic piece of art into the classroom and introduce it to the school children. To expand the program, she’d later train other volunteers to visit additional grades. Thanks to Mary Anna, hundreds of children who passed through St. Mary’s can detect a Manet from a Monet.
When her daughters were a bit older, Mary Anna presented educational slide shows of artwork for garden clubs. Eventually, she began volunteering as a tour guide, first at the Terra Museum of American Art, and later at The Art Institute of Chicago. These were demanding and coveted volunteer positions that required tour guides keep abreast of new exhibits and write position papers.
Although her volunteering was rewarding, Mary Anna’s main focus never swerved from her family. She never missed one of her daughter’s soccer games, or, later, a chance to visit them at their colleges. She loved tradition; holidays and birthdays were celebrated to their fullest. She was admired as a consummate hostess, including hosting a foreign exchange student from Belgium for a year with whom she remained close for the rest of her life. A talented homemaker, she cultivated at all times an environment of elegance. Sunday dinners, she believed, should not only have delicious food and a priest as an honored guest, but a table set with linens, candlelight, and fresh flowers she’d arranged with techniques gleaned from her garden club; woe to the child who’d perform the sacrilege of, say, placing a ketchup bottle directly on the table. Well-dressed, well-read, she maintained her college French though weekly lessons and enjoyed traveling to Europe. In later years, she swapped Chicago’s harsh winter months for those of Naples, FL, where she embraced a second large group of friends.
In her late seventies, Mary Anna began to show signs of dementia, and isolation due to Covid sped the progress of the disease. By late 2020, Mary Anna could no longer live alone. Leaving her home in Lake Bluff and the many friends she’d made through bridge club and circle group and “the walkers” and post-mass coffee with “the girls” was hard, but those who knew Mary Anna when her daughter Julie passed away saw the same resolve in her, the same courage and determination to make the best of a painful situation. She faced her new life with dignity, and once she settled in Oxford, MS, she took much joy living just down the road from her daughter Beth Ann, son-in-law, Tom Franklin, and her three grandchildren, Anna Claire, Thomas, and Nolan, whom she adored. She enjoyed Sunday dinners at their house and valiantly looked past the ketchup bottle.
Mary Anna died at the age of 86 after a devastating period of physical and mental decline that included many falls and broken bones. But even at the end, even when memories were stripped from her, indeed, even when expressive aphasia meant she could no longer talk or understand speech, her essential sweetness remained. The many, many healthcare professionals who cared for her when she could no longer care for herself always said the same thing after interactions: “What a sweet lady.” And they were right.
Mary Anna McNamara Malich, a very sweet lady, will be celebrated at a later date at St. Mary’s Church in Lake Forest, Illinois. Those who wish to honor her could do so by donating to Reading Power, where she was an occasional volunteer, a one-on-one tutoring program that fosters literacy among school children. https://readingpowerinc.org/donate/
