Mary Lou (Hatfield) Laursen, 87, passed away at her home on Galveston Island on June 15, 2016, after a year-long battle with cancer.
Mary Lou was born on July 1, 1928, in Bellingham, Washington to Lawrence M. and Helen Jones Hatfield. She grew up in Bellingham and Port Angeles, Washington and Portland, Oregon where she graduated from Franklin High School in 1945. She and her family lived much of their free time on the Oregon beaches. She attended the University of Oregon for two years, where she was a member of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority.
Mary Lou was happily married to her husband and best friend, Harry Leonard Laursen, for 59 years, until his passing in 2009. They lived and raised their family in Portland, Oregon, Kansas City, Kansas, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Petersburg, Virginia, and then lived their retirement years in Houston and Galveston, Texas. Mary Lou worked many years as an executive assistant to School District Superintendents in Hopkins, Minnesota and Houston, Texas. She was a member of the Houston First Congregational Church, an avid volunteer in community organizations and hospitals, and a dedicated, life-long member of PEO.
She is survived by her three sons, Craig in California, Steve (and wife Dianne) in Idaho, and Bryan (and wife Diane) in North Carolina, and eight beloved grandchildren, Seth, Grant, Pat, Jessi, Cole, Anna, Kieren and Chase, and by her sister Linda Hatfield Small (Douglas), Michigan and brother Lawrence Hatfield, New Mexico, Mary Lou was preceded in death by her parents and her sister, Sally Hatfield Joyce (Colorado).
Mary Lou was friendly, outgoing and engaging. She greeted everyone with a warm smile and genuine interest. She was a caring and protective mother, always deeply supportive of and active in her children’s interests. She was inquisitive, well-read, intelligent, and thoughtful. She was adventurous and had an insatiable curiosity about people and the world which she played out through world travel, reading, movie-going and immersion in arts and culture. She was dedicated to the causes she believed in. She was a great friend to many people in all of the places where she lived. And, Mary Lou loved to do jigsaw puzzles!
A memorial service and reception will be held at 3:00 PM on Saturday July 9, 2016, at the First Congregational Church, 10840 Beinhorn Road, Houston. Her ashes will be placed alongside her husband Harry’s in the church memorial garden. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Mary Lou’s memory to the Houston First Congregational Church Memorial Fund, the Galveston Shriner’s Children’s Hospital, or PEO.