Mary Vicchi Laity

July 9, 1930 - July 24, 2022

Mary Vicchi Laity passed away peacefully on July 24 at her home in Princeton Windrows with family members by her side. She was 92. Mary was born on July 9, 1930, in a charity hospital on Welfare (now Roosevelt) Island in New York City. Her parents were immigrants from Italy with very little formal education, but Mary benefitted from the excellent educational opportunities offered by the New York public schools, first at P.S. 59 in Manhattan, where she gave the Farewell Address (valedictorian's speech) at her eighth-grade graduation, then at Hunter High School, where she obtained a first-rate liberal arts education. She matriculated at Hunter College, then one of the top women's colleges in the state, before moving with her family to Miami. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Miami.

While at Miami, Mary worked over the summers at the Monmouth Hotel in Spring Lake, New Jersey, where she met her future husband of forty-two years, Richard Laity, a graduate of Haverford College who was going on to graduate school; Mary and Richard were married in 1951. They spent the first few years of their marriage in Ames, Iowa, where Richard earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Iowa State University and Mary taught fourth grade. In 1955 Mary and Richard moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where Richard was a member of the Chemistry Department at Princeton University, later becoming professor of chemistry at Rutgers, and Mary  reared their five children. When the children were older, Mary returned to school, earning an M.A. and  M.Phil. in English from Rutgers University. A gifted educator, she taught literature at the University College adult school of Rutgers while a graduate student, tutored children through the volunteer organization College Bound, and taught a wide variety of literature classes, from Charles Dickens to Henry James to Virginia Woolf and others, in the Evergreen Forum, where she had a devoted following of students eager to take whatever course she was teaching.

A lifelong avid reader with an interest in the arts, Mary wrote reviews for the local papers on art, music, and history. She belonged to two reading groups and for twenty-two years was a member of the Travellers Club—an organization of women who would research and write a paper each year on an eclectic variety of topics; Mary's numerous papers included studies on Magna Carta and English law, fiction of the Great Depression, and the lost world of Byzantium. She later expanded many of these for the Forum at Windrows, an independent living community to which she moved in 2016.

Mary was active in the Princeton community in other ways, as a member of the League of Women Voters and the Women's College Club of Princeton (of which she was for many years the historian and publicity chair).

Mary's professional life included jobs as a proofreader at Peterson's Guides, fundraiser for Preservation New Jersey, and supervisor for many years of the proofing department at Caliper Corporation.

Mary loved New York City, not only for its cultural offerings, but because she believed that during the Depression and the 1940s, it was good to its poor people, offering them excellent educational and other opportunities.

A wonderful and beloved mother, throughout her long life Mary was always ready to listen to and support her five children, providing for each whatever help or encouragement he or she most needed. And she passed on to them her love of literature and art, her sense of fairness and support for the underprivileged, her patriotism and commitment to citizens' rights and responsibilities (she never missed a vote), and her unwavering faith in her family. As both mother and grandmother, she treated each child as a unique, special individual.  She was a delightful traveling companion, a wonderful cook, a  staunch companion in joy and sorrow, and a friend.

Mary is survived by her children and their spouses, James Laity and Mary Anne Festa, Susan Laity, Katherine and Earl Walker, William Laity, and John Laity and Linda Feng, and her grandchildren Richard Laity-Festa, Rachel Laity, Gretchen Laity, Enzo Feng-Laity, and Metta Feng-Laity.

A memorial service will be held in the fall at Trinity Episcopal Church.