Mary Evelyn Krost

Mary Evelyn Griffin Krost seemed to find the good in all those she encountered. She had kind words for one and all. And with her sunny personality, she blazed a path of goodwill that spanned generations and continents. Mary died May 17 in Decatur, Georgia, where she lived for the past nine years. She was 95.

A product of a small town where no one locked their doors, Mary later lived in many places across the United States. She was a devoted wife and mother. She also pursued a career as a librarian and felt enriched by bringing the world to anyone seeking to expand their knowledge.

Mary was born and spent her childhood in Berlin, a paper mill town in the rugged north woods of New Hampshire with a colorful history from the days of lumberjacks. Although she grew up during the difficult days of the Great Depression, she never felt deprived, surrounded by an extended family and friends.

As a girl she spent many summers at the family’s treasured cottage or “camp,” Happy Days, on a lake in the forested mountains north of Berlin, with her older siblings, Pauline and Raymond. Days were devoted to swimming, picking blueberries and blackberries from wild patches and enjoying the stunning scenery of the pristine lake, known as Cedar Pond despite its large size. Many evenings were devoted to dancing to Big Band-era swing music by the juke box at a lakeside pavilion. In winter, she often went skiing with friends on the type of long wooden skis now seen in ski town museums. And it was in Berlin that she met her husband, John Erich Krost, a sophisticated New Yorker who was in town working on an engineering project for one of the paper mills after serving in World War II as a paratrooper.

She and John became avid travelers and visited many countries and continents. Among their adventures, they visited China during the era when people there commonly traveled by bicycle and wore Mao suits.

Mary worked as a secretary as a young woman in the late 1940s and early ‘50s but eventually gave up work to be a housewife. But later she went back to school in the 1970s and earned a master’s degree in library science, graduating cum laude from Western Michigan University, during a groundbreaking time when many women were expanding their horizons. Mary worked at a series of libraries during her career, including a police department library in Kalamazoo, Michigan; the Prince George’s Community College library in suburban Washington, D.C.; and the Marine Research Laboratory of the Florida Department of Natural Resources in Saint Petersburg, Florida, where she catalogued scientific journals and worked with marine biologists. Always sitting prominently on her desk was a coffee cup adorned with the book-reading figure that symbolizes libraries.

Later after retiring, she did volunteer work for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and for the Annapolis Visitors Center in Maryland. She became a fixture in Annapolis by walking the same route down Main Street several times a week to the waterfront center and was known to many store owners along the way.

How John and Mary came to live in the Annapolis area in the mid-1980s is an interesting story. At the time their son, Jack, was a newspaper reporter in Baltimore who covered the Maryland state legislature when it was in session and lived in Annapolis for those several months. One year, John and Mary came up from Florida to visit Jack, and they liked Annapolis so much they moved there. That launched a wonderful era marked by crab feasts, Naval Academy football games, walks across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, day trips to the beach and savoring Annapolis’ rich history.

Mary is survived by Jack (Melissa); her daughter, Karen Reid and grandchildren, Chas, Renee and Michelle Reid.

In addition to her husband, she is predeceased by her brother, Raymond Griffin; and sister, Pauline Haney.

In lieu of flowers, you may donate to Reading is Fundamental, a national non-profit organization that promotes children’s literacy, or by donating to your local bookmobile.

Mary will be buried in coming months in Arlington National Cemetery alongside her beloved husband. A celebration of her life will take place in Annapolis.

You may inquire about details at mkrostmemorial@gmail.com.