Mary Jane (MJ) Clark

Mary Jane (MJ) McElwain Clark, native of Newville, Pennsylvania and a resident of Austin, Texas since May 0f 1953, passed away on Saturday, September 5, 2015. She was born on August 22,1926, at the family home in Newville to Andrew McElwain and Kitty Clover Koser McElwain.

MJ grew up in the country and attended a one-room schoolhouse, Blue Hill, for the first 8 years of her education. She and her sister took the family cows to pasture for several years on their way to school and brought them home after school. Her mother taught her a lot about growing plants, names of flowers, and all about planting and trimming bushes and trees. In childhood, she enjoyed delivering flowers from her mother’s gardens to friends.

She had many hobbies. She did all kinds of needlework, hooked rugs, knitted socks and sweaters, and all kinds of embroidery. She made clothes for herself and others—especially later in life for her two granddaughters. She helped to make flags for the Crockett High School Band. She helped with fundraisers at the YMCA Hotel where she lived for several years in Chicago. She enjoyed singing in the YMCA Choir and Church Choirs, a favorite thing she would continue throughout life in her 80's. She helped raise money for schools her children attended. She enjoyed people.

MJ, as she was known to many friends, was the youngest of eight children. She had an adventurous spirit and a lifetime love of traveling to far-away places with strange sounding names. After graduating from Newville High School in 1944, near the high-water mark of World War II, she left home at 18, to live with her brother Kay’s family in Baden, Pennsylvania and to work as an arc welder on LSTs for the U.S. Navy at American Bridge Company in Leetsdale, Pennsylvania. With the war winding down in Europe and a large inventory of LSTs stockpiled for use against Japan, MJ lost her welding job. “Not to worry”, she said, when sister Ginny beckoned her to California where she found work at the Citizens National Trust & Savings Bank of Los Angeles. After three years at the bank, she moved back eastward to Chicago to work at the big, beautiful Marshall Field Department Store downtown. A fringe benefit was a part-time moonlight job as usher at the Blackstone Theater which featured stage plays and musicals.

Her next move was to St. Louis to work at a hospital and surgical equipment company. Then another sister Kitty, who had moved to Austin with her University of Texas student husband, urged her to get something that had been missing—a UT Education. MJ took a train for Austin in May, enrolled in Home Economics at UT in September of 1953, and graduated in 1957, with a major in clothing, textiles, and design. To pay all of her UT costs and living expenses, she applied for waitress work at the Night Hawk on the Drag. “No waitress experience but a fast learner and hard worker” she told Manager Giles Spillar and got the job. In August of 1953, the Night Hawk Frisco Shop on Burnet Road opened and MJ was transferred to work there as its first waitress. She was soon making good money and could move from sister Kitty’s home to a furnished room with kitchen privileges at the home of Lillie Skrabanek, a friend for life, about a block east of Clark Field, the UT Baseball Park. She also saved enough of her earnings and tips to buy a black Ford for $200 to replace her bicycle transportation.

A lifelong Presbyterian, she joined St. Andrews Presbyterian Church just across the alley from the Frisco Shop where she taught Sunday school and sang in the Choir most Sundays. After graduation, MJ went to work for Modern Floors (floor covering and draperies) for three years.

Then at a summer 1959, party of the “Ionians” (a young adults group at the University Methodist Church), she met Preston Clark who was taking the summer off from his journalism teaching and publications job at Southwest Texas State College to work at the Austin American-Statesman copy desk. MJ and PC kept company for a year and were married on August 14, 1960, at the First Southern Presbyterian Church (now Central Presbyterian) in downtown Austin. Starting with a honeymoon drive from Austin to Niagara Falls, their life together as a long, happy string of vacation trips, family and military reunions throughout the USA and across the Atlantic to Scotland, England, France and the Heart of Europe; then across the Pacific to a second honeymoon in Hawaii with WWII crew friends, navigator Dick and soulmate Charlotte Getz, leading the way.

Preston and MJ were active members of Faith Presbyterian Church in South Austin for nearly 50 years, both serving as Elders and Mary as Chairman of the Buildings and Grounds Committee, Sunday school teacher, and long member of the Choir. MJ was also known as the “Flower Lady of Faith” for her self-appointed weekly task of providing flowers from her garden for most Church Services.

She was predeceased by her parents; her loving husband, Preston Clark; brothers, Guy Edward McElwain, Sharp (Kay) McElwain, Jay McElwain, and John McElwain; sisters, Elizabeth Fuller, Virginia Hall, and Kitty Talley; sisters-in-law, Elizabeth (Betty Ann) McElwain, Mildred McElwain, Elvira McElwain, and Phyllis McElwain; brothers-in-law, Dale Fuller and Charles Hall; numerous nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends.

Mary Jane is survived by her son, Jim Clark and wife, Charla and their son, Trevor James Clark; daughter, Rebecca Lynn (Becky) Clark; son by Mary Jane’s first marriage, Scott Harclerode and wife Denise and their daughters, Cara Case and husband, Scott and Katherine Harclerode; brother-in-law, Lee Talley and wife, Nance; numerous other relatives and a host of friends.

The family will receive friends from 10:00 A.M. to Noon, Thursday, September 10, 2015, at Cook-Walden/Forest Oaks Funeral Home. Graveside Services will follow at Noon at Cook-Walden/Forest Oaks Memorial Park, officiated by longtime friend Rev. Pete Hendrick.

A Memorial Service will be held at 11:00 A.M., Saturday, September 19, 2015, at Faith Presbyterian Church, 1314 East Oltorf Street, with Rev. Dr. Kyle Walker officiating. There will be a reception at Faith Church’s Wright Fellowship Hall following the Service.

In lieu of flowers, the family would like contributions to be made in MJ’s memory to the Faith Presbyterian Church Choir or Faith Food Pantry.