Miriam Kelley Roos

Miriam Kelley Roos died peacefully at home on October 9, 2024, at age 101, after a remarkably healthy and long life, up to the very day of her death when her heart finally gave out. Born in 1923 to Geraldine Tully Kelley and Charles Felix Kelley, Miriam grew up in a big Irish Catholic family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father was a prominent attorney and elected official. He involved the whole family in politics and in Catholic and Irish fraternal organizations. He was elected District Attorney of Philadelphia in 1932.

Miriam’s first job upon graduation from Mount Saint Joseph’s Academy was as secretary for her father’s private law practice in the Philadelphia Land Title Building. In 1941, when she was only eighteen years old, her father suffered a massive heart attack and died in her lap as his chauffeur rushed him to a nearby hospital. Miriam’s mother found out about his death when a reporter came to their Germantown home.

Miriam met her future husband, William Fredrick Roos, on a blind date the previous Christmas when he invited her to West Point for a holiday weekend in 1940. Bill was in his plebe (first) year at West Point when cadets weren’t allowed to go home for the holiday. Since he was from Salt Lake City, Utah, and didn’t know any local girls, he was very pleased to be set up by a friend. Bill and Miriam loved to tell the story of how she saw two cadets as she exited the elevator at the Thayer Hotel before the first dance and thought to herself “I hope he’s the tall one.” At 5’8” herself and a former basketball standout at the Mount, she was very pleased to find out that Bill was indeed the tall one.

After her father’s sudden death, Miriam went to work for the City’s Registrar of Wills while corresponding with her beau at West Point. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, West Point moved the 1943 and 1944 classes ahead so that the new lieutenants could join the war effort as quickly as possible. Bill graduated in June 1943 to become a combat engineer platoon commander and headed to the Pacific to fight the Japanese and clear jungles. He would build airfields, roads, hospitals, and harbors to create the military base on Guam. Bill and Miriam wrote letters to each other, cementing their bond throughout the difficult war years.

After the war, Bill sent for Miriam so they could be married in Hawaii where Bill had been transferred to the Headquarters, U.S. Army Pacific. As she and Bill sat on the beach at Waikiki, she wrote “there couldn’t be a more gorgeous view anywhere in the world than the one they were fortunate enough to view at that very moment.” They were married on November 2, 1946, at Ft. Shafter, and Miriam became Bill’s wife and the mother of their five children in a 62-year partnership that lasted until Bill’s death in 2008.

While raising the children, Miriam managed the family’s moves into 24 different homes, among them Schofield Barracks in Hawaii right after WWII; Heidelberg, Germany, during the Cold War, (where Bill worried that Miriam might have to drive herself and the three small children across a pontoon bridge over the Rhine in the dark of night if the Russians invaded; he had no doubt that she could manage); West Point where Bill taught for four years; and then to Hawaii again at the end of Bill’s military career in the 1960s when he was the Honolulu district engineer.

When asked how she wanted to be remembered, Miriam said that being a homemaker, wife, and mother had been most important to her. She was a Catholic from birth and always tried to lead a faithful life. Her Catholicism was an area where Bill ceded control. She raised the five children in the Catholic faith and while Bill converted, he would usually spend Sunday mornings with the New York Times and then have breakfast ready for the family when they got home from church.

Miriam tried to see the good in everyone. She was a strong woman, proud to raise four daughters who went on to have independent careers. Being an Army wife and mother allowed her to develop her talents. As an officer’s wife, Miriam excelled at entertaining and building esprit de corps within her husband’s unit. She had an optimistic outlook on life and enjoyed getting to know the other wives and figuring out how she could help provide support to families under stressful circumstances. Miriam was proud to serve her country as a military spouse and believed that we were lucky to live in such a wonderful country. She had high praise for those in the military, believing that she lived and worked with exemplary people.

She liked taking charge and being in control of her own household and exercising leadership on church committees. When Miriam and Bill settled in Arlington, VA, after Bill retired from the Army, she ran the St. Agnes Arts & Crafts Guild, which puts on an annual bazaar raising money for the parish and school. She was always interested in health and she loved trying out new yoga and exercise classes. She did not hesitate to encourage her children to adopt healthy habits throughout their lives. Miriam was the anchor for a large family that extends across the country and around the world. Yet she knew how to make sure each of her grandchildren and great grandchildren felt loved and appreciated.

In 2003, Bill and Miriam moved to the Greenspring retirement community in Springfield, Virginia, where they enjoyed evening meals and events with a wide range of friends. After Bill passed away in 2008, Miriam lived another 16 years and, in her final years, was often seen zipping around Greenspring in her motorized wheelchair going to weekly mass, rosary, movie nights, exercise classes, meals and other events with her daughter Libby and her lovely attendants, Millie and Margaret, up until the night before she died.

Miriam was preceded in death by her husband, her parents, all her siblings, and her grandson Alex Clarke. She is survived by her five children: William Fredrick Roos Jr. and his wife Mary Eileen Roos, Patricia Ann Roos and her husband Lee Clarke, Elizabeth Jean Roos, Marianne Louise Roos and her husband David Bland, and Christine Roos Montague and her husband Matthew Montague. She is also survived by nine grandchildren and six great grandchildren: William Edward Lorden Roos and his wife Amie Roos and their three children Liam, Andrew and Lauren; Eileen Roos Butler and her husband Matthew Butler; Elizabeth Bland Glynn and her husband Philip Glynn and their three children Maeve, Zeke and Blythe; Gregory Bland and his wife Megan Moore; Audrey, Clara and Nicole Montague; and Hunter and Virginia Clarke.

A funeral mass will be held at St. Bernadette’s Catholic Church at 11am on Monday, November 4th, with interment to take place at Arlington National Cemetery at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in memory of Miriam Roos to Catholic Charities of Arlington https://secure.ccda.net/Give/Give/Donate/Giving.aspx or to the Greenspring Student Scholar’s Program, or the Mount Saint Joseph Academy in Philadelphia https://msjpa-3049-us-east1-01.preview.finalsitecdn.com/support/giving