Mary Dolores Bedesem

Born October 15, 1924 in Hahnemann Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She married April 23, 1949, at Holy Angels in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She died May 19, 2012 in Pennsylvania.

• Secretary to the General Auditor at Philco Corporation, 1942–1950.

A Philadelphia Childhood

Mary Dolores Bedesem was born on October 15, 1924, at Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital in Philadelphia, the daughter of Paul Peter Bedesem and Ida Mary Greenwood. She attended Holy Angels School and then St. Mary's Academy, a private Catholic girls' school, where she sang in the glee club and played a herald angel in a Christmas nativity pageant, before completing night classes at the Peirce School of Philadelphia and graduating in 1944 with a professional certificate in stenography.

Secretary and Homemaker

Dolores worked as secretary to the general auditor at the Philco Corporation from 1942 until 1950, when she left to raise her family. She married James Richard “Dick” Kelble at Holy Angels in Philadelphia on April 23, 1949. Two decades later, in 1973, she returned to office work — first through a temp agency, then from 1977 as a Secretary 2 at Honeywell's Fort Washington office — and stayed until she was laid off in a 1992 workforce reduction, after which she retired.

A Parish Mother's Life

The documents preserve an unusually detailed record of Dolores's life as a Glenside, Pennsylvania Catholic parish mother during 1972 — a near-daily accounting of Girl Scout troop meetings and outings, choir practice, St. Luke's parish guild luncheons and fashion shows, her children's school events, and summer evenings at Robin Hood Dell hearing everything from Van Cliburn to Madame Butterfly. She sang for decades in St. Luke's choir, remembering particular Masses, hymns, and choir directors fondly enough that fellow choir members' names and the hymns they introduced stuck with her for years afterward — the choir's Christmas Eve performances, its rehearsals scented with the spaghetti sauce of parish supper nights, and the annual end-of-season potluck at the choir director's house.

Later Years

Dolores and Dick kept up visits with their children and grandchildren in later decades, including regular trips to see family in Vermont. She died on May 19, 2012, at The Meadows at Shannondell in Audubon, Pennsylvania — the same retirement community where her husband would later live out his own final years.