Celebrant Pam Meily Vetter


	Celebrating Life Everyone Has A Story...

By Janet Eastman
Freelance Writer

Mary Elizabeth ("Meccie") Crosno Poppen, a Texas farm girl who grew up to become an actress sought after by two Hollywood studios as well as a writer, long-time volunteer and supporter of the arts, education and her community church, died of congestive heart failure at her Ashland, Oregon home on Saturday, June 6. She was 87.

Since moving to Ashland in 1997, Mary served as a deacon and elder at the First Presbyterian Church of Ashland and was a prolific contributor to the church's writers group with Pastor Scott Dalgarno. She spent two years researching her family history and contributed to the book, "Poppen Trails." A passionate gardener and plant expert, she directed the landscape design for her Oak Knoll property and several others.

When she lived in California, she was a charter member of an acting troupe and once directed Charlton Heston and Raquel Welch in a fundraising production. She was a great admirer of the written word presented live.

"One of her greatest passions was her love of poetry," said daughter Julia Rezek, an Ashland-based lighting designer. "She has volumes of poetry books and my earliest memories are of her reading Mother Goose rhymes to me."

Mary Crosno was born in 1922 in Temple, Texas, where her mother Bashia Elizabeth Puett Crosno was born in 1880 and her sister Virginia Louise Sue Crosno Hand, who spent the last years of her life in Ashland, was born in 1911. "My sister always wondered what our parents were doing between the 11 years they had her then me, and I'd say, 'Having fun, not having kids,' " said Mary, displaying her fine sense of humor.

Her father, Bert Alexander Crosno, a musician and merchant, was born (along with his siblings Rhoda, Tilden, Frank, Mandy and Cirb) on a Missouri farm near the site of the 1861 Battle of Belmont, one of the first battles of the Civil War. Bert's father Francis Marion Crosno fought there when he was barely a teenager. Francis was 16 at the end of the war and vowed to return to the area to live.

Francis' dream became Crosno, Missouri, a town along the Mississippi, where he owned a store and ran the lone post office. People up and down the river would filter through to get their parcels and be entertained by Francis and his wife Louise. Decades later, Mary and her daughter Julia Ann Poppen Rezek visited the site together in 1992. Mary recalled during her childhood that there were Indian mounds used to keep the grain dry during the floods on the family farm.

In 1929, when Mary was 7, the Great Depression began to unfurl. While her older sister Virginia, a graduate of the University of Texas (Austin), stayed in Temple to work for the R.O. Culp insurance firm, Mary moved with her parents to Crosno so her father could help on the family farm. "I remember the night we arrived in our Model A it was pouring rain and our car got stuck in the mud," recalled Mary. "I was scared because Dad was going to leave us to walk to Grandpa's to get a team of mules to pull the car. When I looked out the window, there was lighting and I saw the Indian mounds. I thought there must be Indians."

Her maternal grandmother Susan Martha Lykes Puett, who lived in Temple, had given Mary a Buff Orpington hen as a going-away gift. The hen's cage was strapped onto the bumper of the car and Mary remembers crying and singing to the chicken "The eyes of Texas are upon you, you cannot get away." Mary felt far away from her hometown.

Mary attended school during the week at the Eugene Field School in nearby Charleston, MO. At first she lived with her Uncle Tilden Crosno, Aunt Pearl and their two daughters Marion and Ruth. But she missed her parents. "I'd stay up late looking out the window at tree shadows and limbs. I was never an early sleeper. But at this time it was because I was lonely," remembered Mary. Hearing about her daughter's sadness, Mary's mother rented a Charleston apartment and Mary's father stayed with them on weekends.

The three of them returned to Temple in 1933. Mary started the sixth grade and Mary's father opened a piano store, a grocery story, ran a gas station and repaired pianos and organs for churches and universities. Her mother and father taught Sunday school at the First Baptist Church. Bert built a new home on the outskirts of town from brick reused after their old home was razed.

Bashia performed in theaters in Temple and Mary was "Little Red Riding Hood" in the Lanier Elementary School play, studied gestures at Mrs. Fred Day's Expression Class and acted in plays at Central Junior High and Temple High, where she graduated in 1938.

With her father having performed at the Old Opera House in Temple and singing in a barbershop quartet, and her sister Virginia a big fan of theater and movies – she took Mary to see Johnny Weissmuller in "Tarzan the Ape Man" in Charleston in 1932 and the next year to Chicago to the World's Fair, a Cab Calloway performance and the stage production of "Dinner at 8" – it seemed inevitable that Mary would perform on larger stages. "Chicago was exciting to see, me, this little farm girl. We saw the Chicago Art Institute and the new interior decorations at the Congress Hotel. We heard Ted Forito and his orchestra with Ethel Merman singing and one night at dinner at the Joseph Urban Room we sat next to Robert Ripley, believe it or not!" said Mary with a laugh.

"I loved going into those opulent theaters with beautiful lights, golden statutes and what seems like miles of carpet, and on top of that there was the performance. I lean toward all of that," Mary said.

At Texas State College for Women in Denton, Texas and Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, she majored in speech and drama. It was at an acting seminar that her drama instructor told her that two Hollywood scouts had come to Texas to meet her. "I was called out of class and introduced to Milton Lewis, a talent executive from Paramount Pictures. He said there was also a man from Columbia Studios. He told me, 'We're here to see you.'"

Mary said he asked her to attend a tryout that night for the play "The Trial of Mary Dugan." "But I didn't see how I could go to Hollywood. I had to finish school," said Mary with a shrug, 70 years later. Instead, she would funnel her energy into doing community work.

In 1941, she married classmate James Miller Woodson III and they moved to Arizona so he could work as a civil engineer with Phelps Dodge copper mine. "His intention was to work the summer then attend school at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He wanted to study journalism and I was going to continue to study drama," said Mary. "We had great plans."

But soon after that Pearl Harbor was attacked and Woodson enlisted in the Air Force, serving as a B-17 ball turret gunner attached to the Eight Air Force in Great Britain. His plane was shot at and the ball turret was the most vulnerable spot. Woodson was pulled into the cavity of the plane and revived with oxygen, but he could not fly again. Mary joined him in Mitchell Field on Long Island until he was discharged in 1945.

When Woodson was serving overseas, Mary worked in reservations for Delta Airlines in Fort Worth. She would have to find seats for people in order of their importance in the war.

In 1946, the couple moved to California. "We always knew we would get there," said Mary. She was active in community theater, was a charter member of the Hampton Players in Redondo Beach (where she volunteered from 1946-1958), worked as the assistant manager of the Homes Association for the suburban community of Palos Verdes Estates and was secretary of that community's art jury, which had to approve everything from a fence post to a building on the peninsula. "The Olmsted Brothers were the developers and they were very particular. Their father's firm designed Central Park in New York," recalled Mary.

In 1958, Mary divorced her husband and in 1960 she married Dr. Mayo Joseph Poppen, an ophthalmologist and a graduate of the Harvard's Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. He had served in the Navy during WWII on a base in Iceland (his convoy was famously followed up the coast by a German submarine) and was a flight surgeon based in North Africa who flew over southern France and Italy.

Poppen had a son, Joseph Douglas (Doug) Poppen, from his first marriage to Dorothy Poppen, who would visit the couple and join in on family outings and vacations. When Doug was 7 in 1961, Mary gave birth to Julia.

Mary continued to be active at St. Nicholas Episcopal Church in Encino, California, volunteered for 19 years raising funds for Las Patroncitas Guild of Valley Presbyterian Hospital, and served on the board of directors as well as a treasurer, charity ball director, committee chairwoman and volunteer for 17 years of the mother-daughter volunteer organization, the National Charity League of the San Fernando Valley. Their primary philanthropy was Rancho del Valle Crippled Children Society of Los Angeles County. Mary held fundraisers for Julia's school, Harvard-Westlake School (then called Westlake School for Girls), where Mary found herself directing Charlton Heston, Raquel Welch and other famous parents in a fundraising production.

In 1982, Mary and Joe moved from Encino to Mission Viejo, California. In 1991, Joe died at 81 of complications from Parkinson's disease. In 1997, Mary moved to Ashland, Oregon, to be with her daughter Julia and grandson, Ryan Rezek, born in 1984. She is survived by Doug Poppen and Julia and Ryan Rezek.

Mary said she received her love of music and animals from her father, her love of theater, travel and adventure from her sister, and her appreciation of acting from her mother.

Mary will be laid to rest near her late husband Joe Poppen at Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks in Hollywood Hills, California.

Mary requested that donations be made to Peaceable Kingdom Retreat, a nonprofit group that each year treats 6,000 children with chronic illnesses and special needs and their families to retreats on 170 acres on the Lampasas River in Central Texas' scenic Hill Country. More information about the United Way group can be found at www.peaceablekingdomretreat.com or by calling (254) 554-5555.