Mary Martha Coleman of Ellenton, Florida, passed away Monday night, peacefully in her sleep, at the age of 88. She was a 35 year resident of Florida, though she was born in Augusta, Maine, in 1929, and had also lived in Massachusetts, North Carolina and California because her husband, John D. Coleman, who died in 2010, was a career U.S. Marine and transfers were the norm.
She was a proud mother, sister, aunt, and wife, who loved her family fiercely and was unfailingly friendly, kind, and cheerful with friends and strangers alike. A child of the Depression, she lived modestly but happily her entire life. She and her older sister, Tessie, who passed away in 2002, remained very close throughout adulthood. She worshipped her mother, an Irish immigrant who raised her three kids single handedly during the Great Depression after a marital separation.
In the last months of her life, she spoke daily about her love for her mother and her sister.
She is survived by her son, Roger Coleman, her beloved daughter-in-law, Pamela Weisse, who was like a daughter to her, and her three cherished nieces, to whom she was a second mother: Donna Marie Webster, Teresa Ann Wilson, and her namesake, Mary Martha Moody—and their families.
Relishing her Irish Catholic heritage, she journeyed to Ireland twice and visited her mother’s childhood home. She loved to bake, play cards, study the Bible, keep a spotless house, and solve crossword puzzles—at which she was a whiz. She was an incomparable cat-whisperer.
Her parenting philosophy, best summarized by writer Erin Kelly, was: "A good mother loves fiercely but ultimately brings up her children to thrive without her. They must be the most important thing in her life, but if she is the most important thing in theirs, she has failed."
For all this, her son loves her eternally. Memorial services will be announced at a later date.
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