Mary lived with a warm heart, unshakable determination, and a gift for making instant connections. Welcoming, engaging, and always ready with a smile, she created community wherever she went. She lived fully, loved deeply, and brightened countless lives with her humor, resilience, and radiant spirit — a legacy carried forward by her daughters, grandchildren, extended family, and the many friends who loved her.

Mary became an active member of the Fullerton Garden Club, the Fullerton Arboretum, and the Horticultural Society, sharing her knowledge and love of unusual and exotic plants.

After moving from her beloved home in Fullerton to Morningside, Mary embraced every opportunity to make a difference.  She joined creative writing, mahjong, and bridge clubs, participating fully in Morningside’s many activities — even golf competitions. Many residents remember her as one of the first friendly faces they met. After the difficult transition of leaving their own homes, Mary encouraged new residents to engage, helping them find community and connecting them with others who shared their interests.

On their 25th wedding anniversary, Fred surprised Mary with the largest birthday card he could find — a full‑size billboard in downtown Fullerton, towering over the street with his love letter to her for the whole town to see.

Lifelong gardeners, Mary and Fred, poured creativity and joy into the soil. Their Fullerton home blossomed into a lush sanctuary filled with roses, camellias, plumerias, exotic plants, and even a fig tree that her husband Fred admired for its beauty — and teased her endlessly for its mess. Their home was also animated by unusual pets, including Joaquin, their blue‑and‑gold macaw, along with chickens, quail, and rabbits.

Mary attended EVERY piano recital, play, ballet performance, Carnival show, horse show, parade and halftime show.  They set high expectations, instilling values of hard work, honesty, integrity and love for family.  Weekends and vacations were filled with home improvement projects - building a brick wall, planting gardens, making a sidewalk, weeding, caring for chickens, rabbits and quail - and family trips.  They encouraged exploration, nurturing and supporting each child in discovering what they loved.

Soon after, Mary and Fred were married, they moved with their first daughter, Kate, to a trailer camp in Venezuela — the start of a remarkable international journey.

Berniece Marie being added to Mary's U.S. Passport.

An update Passport picture including all four daughters.

With an open heart and boundless curiosity, Mary embraced each new culture as they raised four daughters across Venezuela, Colombia, Pakistan, Bahrain, and Trinidad before finally settling in Fullerton.

In time, he won her heart, becoming the great love of her life. Their life together began in October 1954 with a wedding in her parents’ California home.

Her father, Harry Howe, used every opportunity to connect her with a handsome petroleum engineer who lived in one of his apartment buildings. Mary resisted with characteristic stubbornness. On one occasion, after learning Fred had been invited to dinner, she changed out of her dress and into jeans and a T‑shirt before going downstairs — and Fred still thought she was gorgeous.

Working Summer Stock in Hollywood, she collaborated with celebrities including Sidney Poitier, Edgar Buchanan, Dennis Hopper, Alvin Ailey, Ray Agahayan, Adelaide Cumming (the original “Betty Crocker” for General Mills), Lupita Tovar and many others.  She collected wonderful stories from those years — including the ones about Dennis “the menace” Hopper, who once drove her through Arizona to gather props, and another time when she and a friend hid him under their petticoats in the back seat of a car to get him across the border from Mexico.

Her clever, imaginative designs were so strong they were taken on the road, and her Porgy and Bess sets won awards and were used in professional productions internationally.

From the beginning, Mary chose her own path. Upon graduating High School, her father encouraged her to pursue an “MRS.” she had no interest. Instead, she followed her passion into Theater Arts and set design.

OBITUARY

Margaret Mary Foy

February 4, 1932 – November 26, 2025

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