Mary Louise Theresa Loreliss Emma Doerflein bore the names of beloved women in her Germanic maternal lineage with deftness, grace, and elan. She was born on March 22, 1930 in Seattle, where she graduated from Balllard High School and Seattle Pacific College. Mary died August 10, 2016 on her adopted island of San Juan, where she built a sacred home with unrestrained imagination — her joyous “Parthenon,” expressive of light and shadow, hearth and surprise—which she shared with the muses of her life, a succession of cherished goats. The meanings of her six names rose from her spirit into the world as if prescient. She herself was a little village, a gathering place, a rock headland to lost souls, an island-loving island, an agile warrior, rebellious for her convictions, bitter toward injustice. She was also a wished-for daughter who fulfilled her mother’s legacy of music as her own great lifelong passion, infusing her community with violin, piano, and singing. Mary’s mischievous alias, Baruch the Scribe, served as the name of her successful downtown Seattle stenography business and clarified her keen identification with historical record, historical puzzles, verbal wit, and archeological discovery, all through the lens of her bedrock, the Bible. In her later years she made eighteen trips to Turkey, which culminated in the forthcoming book, In the Mountains of Ararat, an investigation into the remains of Noah’s Ark.

It is fitting and not without a touch of irony that in addition to her own business, Mary’s career spanned city, state, and federal governments. She thrilled to her specific preoccupations yet always evoked their universal significance. She lived in the artist’s world of wonder and imagination with an abiding affinity for law, justice, order. Mary was above all a lover of life and people, treasuring her family, her many friends, and her beloved soul mate Bob Thompson, who predeceased her. A world traveler, she spoke of death as “the greatest voyage one may ever undertake.” All of us who loved Mary will remember her forever as a towering original spirit who lifted us up, enchanted by her ethereal voice, moved by her worker’s hands, inspired by her struggle to wed the best of herself to the call of earthly and spiritual vocations.

Mary is survived by nieces and nephews Janet Radford, Diane Wainhouse, Phillip Doerflein and David Doerflein; and Carol Spaulding, whom she mothered as her own daughter, offering her protection, shelter, solace and unconditional love.

Graveside services will be held at the Valley Church cemetery, San Juan Island, on Wednesday, Aug. 17 at 2:30 p.m. According to Mary’s wishes, pastor Joe Bettridge will officiate, and the Friday Harbor Presbyterian church bell choir will participate.

Mary’s website will remain active: www.baruch-the-scribe.com