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Mary Lou Cole, Class of 2004 – A Legacy of Love

08/08/2023 by mconnally

Deborah Canterbury, Class of 2014

Emeritus and chapter co-founder Sally Evans reports that one of our chapter founders, Mary Lou Cole recently passed away. Another co-founder and first president, Donna Cole, added the following personal note:

She was my classmate in TMN training in the class of 2002. Mary Lou is the one that got me into birding. She was such an excellent teacher and I just soaked it all up. She arranged a couple of birding trips for some of us and played guide on them. One was to High Island.

The photo is from the Annual State Meeting 2004, when we were getting our train-the-trainer certification for Flying Wild.

From her obituary:

Mary Lou was an avid birdwatcher and had over 3,000 birds on her world life list and 800+ on her United States list. She was constantly studying birds and teaching us all. Feeding and caring for all the critters she encountered was so important to her. She saved many, many cats over the years. Mary Lou enjoyed travel and had visited all 50 states and countless countries, often on a birding trip.

During retirement, she spent most of her time volunteering. Mary Lou had a passion for the desert, nature, and gardening. She combined that into volunteering twice a week as a Docent for the Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona, where she earned her 10,000-hour “Pack Rat” volunteer statue. She was very proud of that accomplishment.


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Filed Under: Members, Obituary Tagged With: Class of 2004, Current News, Deborah Canterbury, Founder, Mary Lou Cole

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