Thank you Mary P Gottwald Williams
There’s always a swirl of bittersweet recollection that follows learning of someone’s untimely death, made ever more regretful by time and distance. That helpless feeling of an irreconcilably missed connection. I learned last night that Mary Prosser Gottwald Williams died in 2003. Mary was a sometimes science teacher, Outdoor Club sponsor, and general problem solver to me when I was in High School at Pembroke Hill, in Kansas City. I served two terms as Outdoor Club President and one as Treasurer under her and thanks entirely to her tutelage. She was a special person who I always imagined I would reconnect with after graduation, but never did. After she handed me a Gloria Jeans coffee basket at High School graduation, I never saw her again. I’m sorry for that. I went off to college and got on with life. But Mary was important to me and I don’t want to let that go. I want to say thank you to someone who forever changed my life, even if she never hears it.
Dear Mary P,
I would have never climbed Herford wall, hiked Big Bend National Park, or spent some of the finest hours of my life in the bowels of a cave or at the end of a rope without you. You taught me to sell oranges, organize group trips, and to always… always check my rope. You once lost me in the back woods of the Missouri Ozarks but you never let me down and I will always be grateful. You put me in places where I was forced to confront my shortcomings and pushed me to be more than I thought I could be. You taught me to look in places nobody ever thought to look, just because I can, and that opened up the world to me in the years since. I’m 50 now, six years older than you will ever be, that blows my mind and breaks my heart. But you should know that not a week has gone by since graduation day in 1991 that I haven’t thought of you and how your strong hands have left a permanent mark on the man that I have become. I’m sorry I will never get to tell you about my time in Lechuguilla Cave or the back half of Cave of the Winds but mostly I’m sad that your bright eyes don’t get to see all the ripples that you have left behind.
Thank you Mary P.
Josh Quarles
Mary was my roommate during her time at William and Mary. What a sweet and special lady. I was delighted to be invited to her wedding in 1982, but we lost touch after that. I did not know the world lost Mary 20 years ago!–I was reading another Gottwald obit recently and caused me
to think of her. In my Virginia years in the 80s and 90s I knew about this dynamic Richmond family and all their good works and high ideals and generosity to their community. Mary was a special person and though we were acquainted for only 2 years, I always remembered her well.
Mrs Robert Whyley
Washington DC