Mary Alice Dee

1920s–1930s

Born 7 December 1921 in Syracuse, New York, to Ambrose Patrick Dee and Mary Alice Farrell, and grew up in the Pittsburgh area. Graduated from Mount Lebanon High School in 1939, voted "Best Natured" in her class.

1940s

Graduated from Slippery Rock State Teachers College in January 1943 and taught physical education and English at Beaver Area High School. Commissioned an ensign in the WAVES in 1944 and served at the Naval Supply Depot in Clearfield, Utah, where she married Lt. Jim Leineweber on 5 April 1945. Settled in Portland, Oregon.

1950s–1960s

Raised six children on SE Ash Street in Portland and volunteered often at All Saints parish, becoming the first laywoman on its school board in 1965. Taught physical education at the University of Portland's College of Nursing.

1990s

Celebrated her fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1995 and died in Portland on 2 January 1996, less than three months after Jim.

Syracuse to Mount Lebanon

Mary Alice Dee was born on December 7, 1921, in Syracuse, New York, the daughter of Ambrose Patrick Dee and Mary Alice Farrell. Her brother Ambrose Jr. was three years older. By 1924 the family had moved to 45 Florence Avenue in Mount Lebanon, outside Pittsburgh, which would be her home until she joined the Navy, and a younger brother, Bob, was born in 1931. In December 1931 Mary Alice belonged to the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph's Junior Komic Club, and in the summer of 1932 the whole family spent five weeks back in Syracuse visiting her grandmother, Anna Farrell.

At Mount Lebanon High School, from 1935 to 1939, she was vice-president of the Girls' Athletic Association council, senior class secretary, a homeroom officer, and a member of the library, the class play committee, and the committee that monitored hallway traffic, and in April 1939 she played Little Mary in the school production of Stage Door. Her classmates voted her "Best Natured."

"Deedie" at Slippery Rock

In the fall of 1939 she went to Slippery Rock State Teachers College to study physical education, with a minor in English. Her college friends called her "Deedie." She played Gwendolyn Fairfax in The Importance of Being Earnest in her first semester, swam on the women's swim team, joined the Newman Club, and worked on the Saxigena yearbook. She was a chaplain of Phi Delta Pi, the national physical-education fraternity for women, a member of Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society, and president of the Women's Dormitory Council, and in October 1942 she was president of the Western Pennsylvania division of the Athletic Federation of College Women. She graduated on January 26, 1943, with a bachelor of science in health education.

Every summer from 1939 to 1943 she worked for the Mount Lebanon public schools as a senior recreation counselor and swimming instructor, running programs for about a hundred children and adults a day and teaching Red Cross lifesaving, for $180 a summer. In December 1942 she started teaching girls' physical education and ninth-grade English at Beaver Area High School for $1,650 a year. She ran the Girls' Athletic Association, with its volleyball, basketball, and badminton tournaments, roller-skating and swimming parties, and dance classes; directed the Leaders' Club and the cheerleaders; and staged the school's annual May Day pageant.

Ensign Dee

In April 1944 Mary Alice applied to the WAVES, the Navy's women's reserve. The interviewing officer called her "attractive, sparkling personality, well poised, capable, dependable, and a natural and chosen leader," and noted that she had been well liked by everyone she had worked with. That summer she trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and on August 22, 1944, she was commissioned an ensign and put on a train for San Francisco, an eight-day trip. After a short assignment at the Twelfth Naval District's recreation and athletic office, she reported on September 11, 1944, to the Naval Supply Depot at Clearfield, Utah, as assistant to the welfare and recreation officer, a job then held by Lieutenant Jim Leineweber.

On September 30 she had dinner with Captain Mildred McAfee, the director of the WAVES. Her commanding officer wrote at the end of 1944 that she had "a pleasing personality" and was "well regarded by the officers and well liked by the enlisted personnel." In January 1945 she took leave to go home to Pennsylvania to see her brother Ambrose, back on a month's visit after three years overseas. On April 5, 1945, she and Jim were married at the Hill Field air base chapel in Clearfield by Father John D. Mitchell of St. Olaf's in Bountiful, and they honeymooned at the Shirley Savoy Hotel in Denver. That June her new commanding officer reported that she "possesses outstanding ability to associate and work harmoniously with others."

Expecting their first child, Mary Alice resigned from active duty in August 1945 and was released that fall. She stayed in the reserve until 1949, when the Navy, which did not allow mothers of children under eighteen to serve, asked for her resignation; she was honorably discharged that September.

An All Saints Mother

After the war the Leinewebers settled in Portland, first in Jim's mother's house on NW Glisan Street and an upstairs flat on NW Everett, and then on SE Ash Street in All Saints parish, where they lived for more than forty years. They raised six children, among them Greg, Meghan's father. Mary Alice kept teaching when she could, as physical education instructor for the University of Portland's College of Nursing before 1949 and again in 1956–57, at Holy Child Academy, and as a substitute at Marshall High School.

All Saints absorbed a great deal of her energy. Parish notices list her serving hot lunches at the school again and again through the 1950s; in 1955 the Mothers' Club put her in charge of school uniforms, and in 1964 she ran the ticket committee for the parish variety show. In September 1965 she was elected the laywoman member of the All Saints school board, which made All Saints the first Catholic school in Portland, and the 112th in the country, to have lay members on its board. In 1968 she was treasurer of the Central Catholic High School Parents' Club, helping organize its dinner dance at the Sheraton Motor Inn, and she also served as president of Birthright Oregon, a volunteer crisis-pregnancy center.

At Christmas 1993 she and Jim joined the family at their son Greg's house for clam chowder and a ten-foot submarine sandwich, and in the spring of 1995 they celebrated fifty years of marriage in the Columbia Gorge. Jim died that October. Mary Alice died at home on January 2, 1996, at seventy-four, and was buried, like him, at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Portland.