Mary Whelchel
Mary Kelton Whelchel, of Chattanooga, Tennessee died on June 1, 2008 in a local health care facility. She was 92 years old.
Mary, the fifth of seven children, was born to Eston Veston and Laura Virginia Jones Whelchel in Red Belt, Georgia, on August 22, 1915. When she was a small child the family moved to Chickamauga where she attended elementary school and then graduated from Gordon Lee Memorial High.
After high school, she went to Edmondson School of Business in Chattanooga, and, upon graduation took a job with the Trion Company in Trion, Ga., where she worked for five years. In 1942 she moved back to Chickamauga to be with her mother when her two younger brothers left to join the Army and the Navy.
She worked briefly for the Tennessee Valley Authority and then was a bookkeeper for five years with Crystal Springs Bleachery in Chickamauga. For a year she lived in Chattanooga where she was a secretary with United Hosiery Mills, which offered her a job in their New York City office in 1949. She worked there as an executive secretary, a position she held for two years, before becoming a promotional administrator with United Sales Corporation.
From there she went on to a job in the New York office of Buster Brown Textiles and was soon made an executive officer in their Wilmington, Delaware branch.
In 1957, prompted by her adventurous spirit and love of travel, she resigned her job to take a six-week trip to Europe. Her experiences there were deeply satisfying and on her sail back to the States some of her fellow travelers prompted her to make a major career change. Impressed by shipboard photographs of Mary on the dance floor, they urged her to seek work as a model on her return to New York.
She took their suggestion and within a year was modeling with Trigere, Inc. (the company of designer Pauline Trigere) and acting with Entertainment Productions, Inc., both in New York. Subsequently, she was self-employed as a model and actress based in New York through 1977.
Over the years she appeared in newspaper, magazine, and television ads, and even had bit parts in a few movies; she once had a small speaking part in a film starring Sophia Loren. Early in her career she was the attractive middle-aged “Mrs. Exeter” for Vogue Pattern Book and Magazine.
When Vice President Richard Nixon headed a State visit to the Soviet Union in the late fifties, she went with the group as a model for Vogue Pattern Book that showcased U.S. styles for women. Around the same time the New York Times Sunday Magazine featured her as the model in a four-page fashion spread on the “glamorous older woman.”
In the early seventies, Tiparillo cast Mary as Aunt Zoe in an ad campaign to entice the “liberated” woman to smoke their new slim cigars. Later in her career she was a shipboard model on several cruises to Central and South America.
Though her career brought Mary unusual opportunities for adventure, travel, and interesting work, at times she took part-time secretarial work to supplement her modeling career.
Mary loved living in New York and when she first moved there eagerly explored the city on foot and by taking buses to the “end of the line” and back simply to see the sights in many different neighborhoods. Over the years she was an enthusiastic host and tour guide to her brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews.
Family and friends were always important to Mary. She maintained close ties with her immediate family, and she followed with great interest and affection the lives of her eleven nieces and nephews. She later enjoyed seeing their children grow up and in her last years treasured visits from her great-great-nephew and niece.
Wherever she lived she made good friends and kept many of these friendships throughout her life.
Mary was an avid and excellent photographer who particularly enjoyed photographing her travels and her nieces and nephews when they were children. In the 1940’s she traveled for two months in Mexico and documented the trip in a series of beautiful color slides. Similarly, she photographed her travels in Europe and the Soviet Union.
Her family and friends often asked for repeated showings of her pictures which came to life through vivid accounts of her experience. She especially loved taking candid shots of people in all kinds of places and occupations, and once, after photographing a woman sweeping Moscow streets, she was followed by a police officer. She managed to evade him, but, fearing her film might be confiscated, she stitched it into the lining of her fur hat and safely brought it home.
In 1978 Mary moved back to Chattanooga to be close to family in the area; she continued working part-time for some years. Once she retired, she began to satisfy a long-held desire to take college courses by auditing classes at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
She found her classes in literature, history, and creative writing particularly engaging and she enjoyed getting to know several of the faculty and interacting with younger students.
As a child Mary joined the Elizabeth Lee United Methodist Church and renewed her membership there in the 1940’s upon her return to Chickamauga. In her later years she belonged to the Rivermont Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga. Her strong faith and her church were important to her, and she made good friends at Rivermont with whom she remained close to the end of her life.
Mary was preceded in death by her parents, Eston Veston and Laura Jones Whelchel; her sisters, Helen Jones Whelchel Kelly, Pearl Augusta Whelchel, and Nellie (Laura Nell) Whelchel McClatachey Workman; her brothers, Robert Edward Whelchel, Sr., Eston Velvin Whelchel, and Harry Jones Whelchel, Sr.; and her nephew, George Thomas Whelchel.
She is survived by her nieces and nephews; Laura Kate Whelchel Sterling and husband, Bob; Marianne Whelchel; Robert Edward Whelchel, Jr. and wife, Lucy; Harry Jones Whelchel, Jr.; Susan Fay Whelchel; Rebecca Anne Whelchel; Danna Pat Whelchel Boyer and husband, Bob; Mary Kay Whelchel DeWyngaert and husband, Karl; Nancy lee Whelchel and husband Bill Smith; David Eston Whelchel and wife, Karen; nine great nieces and nephews, and a great-great nephew and niece.
Funeral services will be held Wednesday at 1 p.m. at Rivermont Presbyterian Church with Dr. Daniel Sansbury officiating. Burial will follow at Chickamauga Cemetery.
The family will receive friends on Tuesday from 4-6 p.m. at the North Chapel.
Memorial donations may be made to Rivermont Presbyterian Church or the charity of your choice.
Arrangements are by Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory and Florist, 5401 Highway 153, Hixson, Tn.
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