I was recently informed that Mary Hinderlie Ager passed away in April. Mary attended Waseca Central with my class of 1959 from 1st grade through junior high school when her father, a Lutheran minister, transfered to another parrish. Mary was a very special person when we knew her and she obviously distinguished herself as an adult. The following is her obituary provided me by her family.
Mary Hinderlie Ager – May 14, 1941 – April 23, 2008
Mary Hinderlie Ager of Palo Alto, California, died peacefully in her home on April 23, 2008. She was 66 years old.
Born in Tyler, Minnesota in 1941, she grew up in Waseca, Minnesota; Midway, Washington; and West Seattle, Washington. In 1963 she graduated Cum Laude from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She earned a Master of Arts in Teaching at Brown University in 1964, and was awarded a PhD in English in 1973 from the University of Pittsburgh. She married Tryg Ager of Eau Claire, Wisconsin in1964. They lived in Pittsburgh until 1967, then in Binghamton, New York until they moved to Palo Alto in 1978.
Her life reflected a pursuit of excellence through friendships. She is remembered by friends from high school in Washington, where she produced musicals and plays, and by classmates from college, where she sang with the St. Olaf College Choir for four years. This provided a foundation for a lifelong commitment to excellence in choral music, including several years with the Binghamton Symphony Chorus in New York, and more than 20 years with the Peninsula Women’s Chorus in Palo Alto. In recent years she, with about a dozen friends, formed the JewelTones ensemble to perform barbershop and popular music for numerous audiences in the Palo Alto area.
She believed that her musical groups were best thought of as communities of friends, and that bonds of friendship and a sense of community could raise the delight, the joy, and the spiritual quality of music for both performers and audiences. She articulated this belief in her co-editorship with Frank Farris of a volume, Take up the Song, that commemorated Patricia Farris Hennings, who conducted the Peninsula Women’s Chorus for many years.
As her children grew up, she shared in the founding of two nursery schools in Binghamton: one for disadvantaged children in 1967, and another, Growing Grounds, in 1972. In Palo Alto she was active in Parents Nursery School for many years. In each case she believed bonds of friendship brought parents and providers together to create excellence in care and a richer opportunity for the children..
Professionally she was a technical editor for Computer Curriculum Corporation and Aspect Communications, where colleagues fondly remember her good humor, her editing skills, and her ability to form friendships that were conducive to excellence into the workplace. Her writing and editing extended beyond work to development and publication of personal memoirs of several Holocaust survivors and veterans of World War II. She participated in the production of books, films, presentations, and performances related to the Song of Survival project – the story of how women imprisoned during World War II in Sumatra survived physically and spiritually through bonds of friendship and a remarkable body of music where these imprisoned women arranged, practiced, and performed classical pieces as a “vocal orchestra.”
Her positive outlook and friendships helped her to survive three different primary cancers over the past 20 years, until a fourth episode finally proved to be overwhelming.
She is survived by her husband of 44 years, Tryg; her son Andrew, his wife Laura, and their son Isaac; her daughter Emily; her brothers John and Mark; her sisters Lois and Anne; her nieces and nephews: Sasha, Paul, Charles, Keith, Kara, Keri, Peter, Eric, Trina and Martin and their children; her extended family; and a vast and diverse community of friends.
A family service and visitation were held on April 27th.
Memorials may be made to the Barbara and Richard Tobias Fund at the University of Pittsburgh, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Parents Nursery School in Palo Alto, or the Peninsula Women’s Chorus.
