Mary K. Evelius, a homemaker who enjoyed classical music and spending summers in Ocean City, died Tuesday of respiratory failure at University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center. The former longtime Ellicott City resident was 89.
The daughter of Harry A. Kelly, a civilian Navy department employee, and Mary Louise Bosse Kelly, a homemaker, Mary Agnes Kelly was born and raised on Poultney Street in Federal Hill.
She was a 1944 graduate of the Institute of Notre Dame. She received a bachelor's degree in English in 1948 from what is now Notre Dame of Maryland University.
In the late 1940s, she worked in the library of The Baltimore Sun as an indexer and later in the advertising department at the Hecht Co. department store.
She met her future husband, John Charles Evelius, in 1952 while a member of a Baltimore Catholic Crusade. They married later that year and settled in Irvington.
Mrs. Evelius left her job in 1953 to raise her family. In 1965, the couple and their family moved to the Valley Mede neighborhood of Ellicott City.
In addition to regularly cooking meals for Our Daily Bread and Meals on Wheels for Central Maryland, she was an active member of the Greenbriar Garden Club of Ellicott City and the Red Hat Society.
She was an avid reader and enjoyed knitting, sewing and attending the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Mrs. Evelius and her husband spent a long weekend each year with a group of close friends at the Tides Inn in Irvington, Va. They also traveled to Europe and enjoyed spending family vacations in Ocean City each summer.
Mr. Evelius, a lawyer who was a founding partner of the firm of Gallagher, Evelius and Jones, died in 2000.
In recent years, Mrs. Evelius lived at Symphony Manor, an assisted-living facility in Roland Park.
She was an active communicant of the Roman Catholic Church of the Resurrection, 3175 Paulskirk Drive, Ellicott City, where a Mass of Christian burial was offered Saturday.
She is survived by three sons, Dr. John Thomas Evelius of Wiltondale, Joseph Charles Evelius of Towson and Paul Francis Evelius of Ellicott City; a daughter, Mary Beth Jones of Towson; eight grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Another son, Mark Evelius, died last year.
— Frederick N. Rasmussen