Duplain, Mary Alice Malloy, died Wednesday of pneumonia at the age of 103. Born in Boston, she lived there independently in her own home until the age of 93, when she moved to Pittsburgh to be with her daughter and son-in-law, Meg and George Cheever and their children.
Mary Duplain graduated in 1934 from Emmanuel College in Boston, then a women’s college. She worked at the Bell Telephone Company. During World War II, she volunteered as a junior hostess at a Stage Door Canteen in Boston, where she met and later married Charles Duplain, a recently discharged serviceman and fellow volunteer who fingerprinted her at the entrance. When her husband died suddenly in his 50s, she devoted herself to raising her only child, Meg, supporting her while she attended Wellesley College and Boston University Law School. To do so, she parlayed her education into a varied career.
Mrs. Duplain worked as Executive Secretary of the Emmanuel College Alumnae Association and as editor of the alumnae college magazine. Later, while earning a master’s degree in education, she taught in the Boston Public Schools, including a long assignment at the English Language Center in the South End of Boston, There she taught English to foreign students via the direct method. At the age of 60, she took sabbatical leave to study Spanish in Madrid in order to communicate more effectively with the increasing number of Spanish-speaking students in her classes.
Keenly intelligent, she loved reading the daily newspapers and books. When her eyesight began to fail as she neared 100, she read Steve Job’s biography by Walter Isaacson in magnified print on an I-pad her grandson, Charlie Cheever, gave her.
Mrs. Duplain loved fashion. From the first in 1999, until ill health made participation impossible, she attended -- elegantly turned out --every Spring Hat Luncheon of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, which was founded by her daughter, President and CEO Meg Cheever.
Mrs. Duplain is survived by three grandchildren: Charlie and Frances of Palo Alto, California, and Mary of New York City, as well as many nieces and nephews.
Funeral from The Robert J. Lawler & Crosby Funeral Home, 1803 Centre St. West Roxbury on Friday August 7, at 9:00 AM. A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated in St. Theresa of Avila Church at 10:00 AM. Relatives and friends are invited to attend.
Visiting hours in the funeral home on Thursday August 6, from 4:00 to 7:00 PM.
Interment Mt. Benedict Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers donations may be made in her memory to The Mary Malloy Duplain Scholarship Fund of Notre Dame Academy in Hingham, Mass.
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Lawler & Crosby Funeral Home
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