Funeral Services for Mary Trueax were scheduled at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 26, at McLean Baptist Church with interment at Lewinsville Presbyterian Church Cemetery in McLean.
Mary Cline Trueax, 85, a former valedictorian at McLean High School who later became the principal at Chesterbrook Elementary School, died Saturday at her home in McLean, several months after graciously accepting the inevitability of the outcome of her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
At the time of her diagnosis in September, she was given three months to live. She stretched out that time to 10 months, said her son, Bill Trueax of McLean.
“She did what she wanted, visited her friends in nursing homes, and visited her friends,” he said. “She was determined to live her life and do what she wanted to do.”
Last Thursday, Mrs. Trueax was picking raspberries in her yard.
She went to bed but did not wake up on Friday.
Her son, Bill, called his longtime friend, McLean physician Dr. Allen B. Horne, who came to the Trueax home to examine her. Mrs. Trueax slept peacefully in a coma until she died early on Saturday, her son said.
“Up until the very last minute she was visiting friends and picking up people to take them to church,” she said.
Trueax was known for crocheting Afghans. In December, when McLean Baptist Church held a celebration of her life, the church was filled. “At least two-thirds of the members held up their hands, saying they had received a gift of an Afghan from Mary,” said MacClaren.
She tutored English as a second language to children and adults at her home as well as church, said MacClaren.
“She was a perfectionist in English. She would never hold it over anybody’s head. But if you had a question about grammar, she was the one to ask.”
Mary Trueax also taught Sunday school at the church for 71 years.
“I never heard of anyone teaching anything for 71 years,” said her son, Bill Trueax.
Mary Trueax was born in North Carolina but moved to McLean at the age of nine months when her father came here to attend George Washington University and work in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
He also became, briefly, the first pastor at McLean Baptist Church, which had just formed and did not yet have a full-time pastor.
“He just preached for a couple of months, got two degrees, farmed 40 acres, and worked for the government full time,” said his grandson, Bill Trueax.
Mary Trueax earned her BA degree in education and MA in English Literature from George Washington University. That is where she met her husband, Alfred William Trueax.
They married in 1937, when she graduated from college, and her father built a house for them on his farm. She lived in that house, on Old Dominion Drive adjacent to McLean Central Park, all her life, and died there Saturday.
Mary Trueax was educated at Franklin Sherman School in McLean from grades one through 12. When she graduated as valedictorian in 1933, the school was then McLean High School.
Just before Christmas, when McLean Baptist Church held a celebration honoring her life, Mary Trueax sat smiling as she listened to humorous anecdotes that church members told about her. Next to her, her son Bill dabbed at his eyes with a tissue.
After the service, conducted to a packed church sanctuary, Trueax led a parade around the church hall, singing “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
“Dr. Thomas Jackson, her former pastor, said at her celebration of life service that she is the kind of church member that every pastor would like to have,” said Beth MacClaren, a self-described “friend and great admirer” of Mary Trueax.
Mrs. Trueax had a fierce interest in history and was a longtime member of the McLean Historical Society. Last month, she attended the dedication of an historic marker at Benvenue in McLean.
She started her teaching career at Mt. Vernon Elementary and became principal of Chesterbrook Elementary in her early 20s, highly unusual both for her age and her gender, said her son.
The American Legion Auxiliary was to present a service on Tuesday afternoon. Mrs. Trueax was a 1946 charter member of that group.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Mary Trueax memorial fund at McLean Baptist Church.