Mary Margaret Livingston Plumlee, 1925-2021
Mary Margaret Livingston Plumlee died peacefully at home in Dallas, Texas, surrounded by members of her family on June 6, 2021, at the age of 95. Mary adored and delighted in her family
Mary was born on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1925, in Sour Lake, Texas but grew up in Liberty, Texas, where her father, a Texas Company (Texaco) employee, was transferred when Mary was three months old. She was an honor graduate of Liberty High School in 1943, at which time she received the DAR Good Citizenship Award and was named Best All Around Girl in her senior class. She was editor of the high school newspaper her senior year. She attended the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pi Sorority and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1946. She was the Duchess from Liberty to the Trinity Valley Exposition in 1947. She met James Moore Plumlee, a returning World War II veteran, at UT-Austin, and they were married on June 22, 1948, in the home of her parents Mr. and Mrs. R. Livingston.
For several years, the young couple lived in West Texas. Mary did post graduate work at Sul Ross State University and taught fourth grade in the Crane ISD. When the couple moved to Midland in 1957, Mary was elected president of the Tejas Garden Club, served on the Midland PTA Council and was a charter member and president of Alpha Delta Pi Alumnae Association of Midland.
After Southwestern Drug Corporation transferred her husband to Dallas in 1964, Mary, a life-long Methodist, be came an active member of Highland Park United Methodist Church. She taught Sunday school, was a choir mother, a member of the Administrative Board, the We Care Ministry, and was a long-time volunteer in the HPUMC Archives. With her husband, she served as co-treasurer of the Texas United Methodist Historical Society.
In Dallas, Mary served on the Parents Board of the Hockaday School and of the St Mark’s School of Texas. She was an officer on the Board of Friday Forum of Dallas for many years. Mary served as librarian for the Jane Douglas Chapter of the DAR. She was a descendant of an old American family whose Livingston forebears arrived in Tidewater Virginia in the 1650s. She was a sixth-generation Texan.
In later years, Mary wrote and published a book entitled In the Shadow of the Steeple, in which she recounted her husband’s experiences as a combat infantryman in Patton’s Third Army in WWII and later as a courier and clerk under Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg War Trials in Germany.
She was preceded in death by her husband of 63 years James (Jim) Moore Plumlee (died 2012) and her brother H.G. Livingston, Sr, (died 1977).
A memorial service and burial will be at the Plumlee family plot in the Oakland Cemetery, Weatherford, Texas.
Among her survivors are her son, Daniel Livingston Plumlee and wife, Elizabeth Ruman Plumlee of Dallas, TX; a daughter, Elizabeth Ellen Russell and husband, Brian Stanley of Kenmore, WA; six grandchildren, Richard Wyatt Russell, Jr, and wife, Kristin Auslander Russell; James Austin Russell and wife, Megan Shoemaker Russell, Daniel Livingston Plumlee, Jr, Katherine Mahan Plumlee and David Ruman Plumlee; Brian Otieno Oketch and wife Christiana Cole Oketch; and one great-grandchild Tyler Austin Russell.