Mary Jane Gormley

Mary Jane Norris Gormley has passed on. Fantastic wife, mother of four, calligrapher, ice hockey coach, Community Chorus member, copy editor, harmonica promoter, great puzzle solver and the world’s best companion is gone from our lives.

Born March 3, 1940 in Milton, Massachusetts as the eldest of three, she spent her formative elementary and high school years attending Milton Academy in the greater Boston area, where her father taught. Upon graduation from high school, she enrolled at the University of Toronto, obtaining an honors degree in History and Philosophy in 1961. Following graduation, she spent a year working for the Catholic missions in Angleton, Texas. Whatever plans she was creating for her future at the time were upset totally when Dexter Gormley, whom she had met at Toronto, came calling and swooped her off to Japan as an Air Force wife. Returning to the US in mid-1965, plans were made to move to Bloomington and have Dexter complete a degree at IU.

Arriving in Bloomington in January of 1966 with a husband and one son, she began her employment by typing dissertations for graduate students and faculty at IU and worked in the former Home Economics Department. After her husband graduated and then became employed by the university, she was able to cut back on the typing and branched out into doing community and church-related service. She sang in both the St. Charles’ church choir and the Bloomington Community Chorus in the early 1970’s, and after moving to the east side of town participated as a volunteer with the Tulip Trace Council of Girl Scouts. Three more children came along through the years and she found herself very involved with their schooling and their activities. When the older boys became interested in hockey she found herself volunteering to teach beginner skaters the rudiments of ice skating and became known as Coach Gormley, a title she never really wanted.

From her typing experience she developed a very good sense of how an article or paper should be written and that morphed into a new love for copy editing. She worked for the IU Press for a while and then joined the staff of the locally produced Journal of American History, where she worked until medical issues forced her retirement in late 2005. During that time she edited several award-winning books and papers. A fascination with words and how they are written inspired her to teach herself to write beautiful calligraphy in several styles. She attended art fairs all over Indiana for several years, selling her wares, and was the director of the 4th Street Festival of Arts and Crafts for a number of years. She also wrote a book on how to write calligraphy for right and left handed people.

The cause of her having to retire from editing was a progression of COPD, which had been diagnosed in 1998, and was becoming too much to ignore in her work. But the COPD had a positive effect on a wider audience. Searching for a way to lessen the effect of difficulty breathing she came up with the idea of using a harmonica to exercise her lungs, and thereby strengthen them. She became a member of SPAH, the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica, and through her contacts with entertainers and manufacturers, developed an appreciation for the instrument as a musical instrument but, more importantly, a medical aid. This led her to team up with a respiratory therapist/musician, Larry Vesely, who worked at Bloomington Hospital, and the two co-authored a book on Harmonicas for Health that is available for free download at www.mjngormley.com. She partnered with manufacturers and local doctors to get large numbers of harmonicas and deliver them to elementary school children in Monroe County, along with music and complete instructions arranged by her grandchildren. Harmonicas had once been a regularly used instrument for musical training in schools in the early part of the 20th century, so that was a natural.

Mary Jane led an exemplary and varied life and her passing will cause great sadness among a large group of people. Some of those remaining are her husband Dexter, her children, Thomas Daniel (Linda), Paul (Colleen) and their three children, Dexter, David and Grace; Christa Hanson (Todd), and Matthew (Natalie) and their two boys, Owen and Dylan; her brother, Robert and sister, Emilie, and local and distant friends too numerous to mention.

A celebration of life will be announced at a later date.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.DayDeremiahFrye.com for the Gormley family.