Mary Alice Hopkins {nee Fowler}

(August 21, 1940 – July 13, 2020)

Mary Alice Hopkins was born in Baltimore, MD in August 1940. She vividly remembers growing up during WWII with victory gardens, rationing, blackouts, trolleys, outdoor markets, and hiding under her desk during drills in the 1950’s. Mary graduated from Goucher College with degrees in Physics and Mathematics. She was a bonafide trailblazer in everything she did including working for NASA and fighting for civil rights in the 1960’s. Always in pursuit of knowledge, she studied in graduate work in Mathematics at the University of Maryland. Later in life, she graduated from UMUC with a Masters in Computer Technology. She has worked for many companies over the years but consistently as a Program Analyst up to the day before she went into the hospital at age 79, when she was taken from us by the cruel COVID-19 virus. Mary was an unstoppable train, although a lot of barriers were thrown in her way. She loved to travel, cook, sew, and research her family’s genealogy, a monumental task that she relished. She was a beloved daughter, sister, aunt, cousin, wife, mother, and grandmother. She adored her son, daughters, and her four beautiful grandchildren. Mary was always involved in her children and grandchildren’s lives from being the Den Mother of her son’s Cub Scout Troop and the Leader of her daughter’s Girl Scout Troop, to rolling proudly through her grandchildren’s school on Grandparent’s day and rooting for them as loudly as possible at every event. Mary is no longer in pain, and she doesn’t have to fight anymore. She is out of her wheelchair and dancing on the nearest cloud. We love and miss you mom.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the National Ataxia Foundation. As many of you know it was a disease she suffered from for many decades. https://ataxia.org/