Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1947 when Mary’s mother was nineteen. Her father walked out on their wedding day so Mary spent the first years of her life in the home of her maternal grandparents. It was a loving environment with two aunts, one of whom had eight children. The home was filled with family stories and traditions. Mary’s grandmother was an active soldier in the Civil Rights struggle.

As a child Mary developed a vivid imagination and loved to spend hours entertaining her younger sister and cousins, by telling stories that she illustrated with drawings. When Mary was seven, her mother remarried a man from New York and moved there with her sister. She and her sister would spend every summer in Alabama. One summer during Junior High Mary refused to return to New York at summer’s end but after considerable strife, finally returned and finished high school at Great Neck North in l965. At Great Neck, Mary and her sister were pioneers in integration being the only black members of the student body there...(continue reading)