1942~ 2024
Mary Sharry, age 81, of Empire, Michigan, passed away surrounded by her family at her home on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, after a well-fought battle with cancer.
Mary was born on December 1, 1942, in Toledo, Ohio. In 1951 Mary and her mother Mildred moved to Detroit and then eventually to Nashville, MI, where Mary attended and graduated from Hastings High School, in 1961. Following high school Mary attended Davenport College where she trained in secretarial skills, including the obsolete practice of shorthand. Mary worked as a secretary in Grand Rapids before she relocated to Detroit where she worked as executive secretary to the editor of the Detroit Free Press, Joe Stroud. In 1970, while driving home from a visit to Niagara Falls with her mother, Mary met, and eventually married, Jack Sharry. Mary continued working at the Free Press until the birth of her first child, Jessica. After becoming a mother, Mary turned her focus to the home where she raised and homeschooled both of her children, Jessica and Gabriel, until she returned to the workforce in 1990 as a census taker and then as relief postmaster at the Empire Post Office. In the mid-1990s Mary pursued higher education and earned her BFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College.
