Mary Ellen Rowe
July 18, 1933 — May 4, 2017
She is survived by her two children, Greg Rowe and Adele (Rowe) Grimes, four grandsons, Daniel and Ryan Shank-Rowe, Spencer and Mason Grimes, daughter-in-law, Donna Shank, son-in-law, Chris Grimes, sister, Carole Ann (Breen) Meylan, and former husband of 25 years, Dennis Rowe. She is predecesed by her sisters, Barbara Breen and Frances Liddicoat. Her strong faith came from her schooling at St. Mary's Academy and then Mount St. Mary's College, both in Los Angeles, and continued through service in institutions such as Meals on Wheels and being the president of the Holy Family Adoptive Agency of Los Angeles, as well as multiple bible study groups through her years.
In her youth, she was an accomplished pianist, playing seven times on local radio in Los Angeles, with the highlight being playing a duet with her sister, Barbara, of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with their younger sister, Carole, turning the pages as they played. The discipline the piano demanded escaped her in school, where she was rather cheekily proud of earning D's in Comportment from her nuns for being a social butterfly. To her father, she was the "boy" of the family, tasked with mowing the lawn as well as enjoying Rams games at the Coliseum in the 1950s together. She was a big fan of the Rams and Notre Dame football.
She loved to travel, even before the age of easy air travel arrived; she traveled to New Orleans and back at age 14, and sailed across the Atlantic to turn 21 in Milan during a European tour in 1954. She also went to Mexico and Hawaii at a young age. She would later travel across much of the U.S., but also to France, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Belize, Panama, Hong Kong and China.
She became a teacher upon graduation from The Mount in 1955, starting in San Bernardino, California and then moving to the Long Beach Unified School District in 1958, where she completed nearly 20 years. She stopped 1964 to raise a family, but then returned to teaching in 1982, finally retiring in 1995. She impacted the lives of hundreds of children. She regularly played piano for her classes to lead them in song. She taught at Madison, Holmes, and Stephenson elementary schools, as well as spending several years substituting across the district.
She was warm, funny, loving, and will be sorely missed. In lieu of flowers, her family requests donations to the Melanoma Research Foundation, https://www.melanoma.org/ Contact family for details on funeral services this Friday, May 12, 2017.
Luyben Dilday Mortuary (562) 425-6401
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