Mary's father, Harry Truitt,and my father, Francis Lingle, were boyhood friends in Irving, Illinois. The friendship continued as both worked in the 1920's for the Illinois Power Co. in the Collinsville/Edwardsville area, then each finding girlfriends, marrying, and beginning to raise children. Mary and I were the first born in each of our respective families. We were a year apart in age both being born in September and Mary being almost exactly a year younger than I was. The families visited each other on occasion, the Truitts being in Edwardsville and the Lingles, then, in Irving. So, I knew Mary as a pre-schooler before the term "pre-schooler" had been invented. The Truits were blessed with two boys later, Bill and John, and the Lingles were blessed with one, Donald. The Truitt family moved to Vandalia around 1940 or 1941 and in the "summer of '42" [there's a book and a movie by that name] the Lingles did the same. Although WW II was being fought at that time and the draft was eventually scooping up those classified physically as 4F, neither father had to go having been barely over the age limit.
When we moved to Vandalia I was almost 10 and headed for the fifth grade. Mary, then, was almost 9 and going into the fourth. It was really nice to move to "the big city" and be welcomed by a family we already knew. I can recall sometime in the 40's Mary's dad went to work for Coca Cola and my dad would buy a full wooden case of 24 Coke's from Harry. Coke's were 5 cents each and in a bottle. It was such a treat to have this many "sodies" in the house and we made them last. The families continued to visit back and forth as the children grew up, graduated from Vandalia Community High School, and went their separate ways.
Mary received her Bachelor's Degree from Southern Illinois University and began teaching in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After 35 years there she retired and came back to Vandalia to care for her mother. And how Vandalia, Fayette Co., and Illinois, in general, have been blessed to have her back. I won't list here the things she has done, the roles she has played, or the folks she has helped. Some of that can be read in her obituary.
I'll only say this: A family blessed with a baby girl and giving that baby girl the name of "Mary" is "automatically" giving that little girl a name connotation of humility, achievement, responsibility, and reverence. [It was our Lord's Mother's name.] Mary Truitt lived up to that name. Bob Lingle, Cumming [Atlanta], Georgia
