Debbie Hough is a cat lover. She has had as many as four rescued cats running around her home at one time. Several years ago, she was down to just one feline when she decided to rescue a calico cat. Well, this new calico cat named “Jasmine” did not get along with her larger, spicier and more dominant other cat. It left Debbie with a conundrum.
“She was very sweet, but she could not stand up to the one I have,” Debbie recalled. “One day my cat just swiped her face and bloodied it. I was lamenting, ‘What can I do? This cat’s so sweet. I can’t keep it here, she’s going to get hurt.’
“A couple days later I got the phone call. Mary said, ‘We’ll take her.’ Not many people will do that. What kind of a friend will take your cat? That was pretty amazing.”
The woman who called was Mary Speedy. A longtime and admired Christian educator who served many congregations in the Presbytery of Carlisle was a lover of all of God’s creatures. Her tireless efforts to connect with youth and explore ways to reach as many as possible were praised but rarely duplicated. She was one of a kind.
Mary passed away Friday, May 2. She was 81.
“She was a good friend,” said Debbie, a longtime Christian educator herself. “We had so much in common. She was great fun. Plus, we shared many other and diverse interests.
“She was not only just a good friend, she was like a sister to me. We roomed together at everything.”
Debbie originally became acquainted with Mary in 1984 when they took a course at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education. At the time, Debbie was serving a church in Houston and Mary was at Abington Presbyterian Church near Philadelphia.
“We bonded from that point on,” said Debbie, who currently volunteers as a leader at Derry Presbyterian Church in Hershey. “We had a love for children and wanting children to be in worship. We were right on the edge of that movement where children are being included in communion. That was a passion for both of us.”
A special gift Mary had was her ability to connect with youth.
“She paid attention. She listened. She cared,” Debbie said. “It worked from the youngest to the oldest. She genuinely was interested in people and would listen to what you were concerned about and would help you with what questions you had. She was willing to give her time with that.
“Kids know that. They know when somebody’s genuine. And she had a sense of humor, and she could be tough. She didn’t entertain fools too easily, but you appreciated that, too.”
Mary’s complete obituary is available by clicking here.
Mary served many congregations during her years of service in the Presbytery of Carlisle. One of them was Monaghan Presbyterian Church in Dillsburg, PA, where she was the Christian educator before retiring. Charlie Best, who was the pastor at Monaghan Church while Mary was serving there, also saw that she had a special connection with youth.
“They would pick up that she cared very much about them,” Charlie said. “She paid attention, they were important, and they picked up on that. She was also a no-nonsense person in some respects. Kids respect that in the long run. She was consistent.”
It was just one of the many qualities that made Mary special.
“She had a heart for the Christian faith,” Charlie added. “Her father, Bill Emery, was a pastor. She had a Presbyterian foundation unlike any other. She had a heart for kids. She was very intelligent and a very astute thinker. She was well respected by her colleagues.
“She had a wonderful combination of knowledge and good theology and yet was able to communicate with a great heart for people.
“She was much more educated than me, much more experienced in the larger church than me, but I was not threatened. She was easy for me to be a colleague with.”
Mary’s involvement with many different congregations in the region says a lot about her knowledge of and passion for Christian education.
“When you’re good and you have a good reputation, they start calling,” Debbie said, explaining why Mary moved around so much. “They go after you. I think she kept seeing opportunities for her ministry to expand. She was willing to try things.
“There was nobody smarter than Mary Speedy. She stayed on top of what was going on.”
At the synod level, she served as moderator of the Synod of the Trinity in 2008-09 after being vice moderator the year before. Mary was also an integral part of the former “Synod School” and wore many hats at the synod level. Former Synod Transitional Executive Susan Wonderland remembers meeting Mary in the mid-1990s during a Presbyterian Youth Connection gathering involving the Synod of the Trinity and the Synod of the Northeast.
“She was really committed to education and to young people beyond the educational setting in the church,” Susan recalled. “The thing that always impressed me was that Mary knew that just because something was and it had worked it didn’t mean that it was the way to go forward. I didn’t experience Mary as being stuck. She understood that culture was changing, that the church was shifting, that young people were changing and that we needed to not just assume because we had a big turnout of kids to something once that we could continue that at infinitum.
“Mary was somebody who I knew would do the work, and so you could count on her to be a good partner and colleague.”
Mary was also one of the Synod’s last educational consultants, serving both the Presbyteries of Carlisle and Donegal.
“She knew how to pull people together,” Debbie explained. “She would have all the educators from Carlisle and Donegal at her home, and she made breakfast for us. We all looked forward to it so much.
“She was a gatherer of people. She could spot things in people and invite them to try those gifts.”
From left, the “auction group” included Joyce MacKichan-Walker, Priscilla Andre-Colton, Debby Madden, Mary Speedy, Carol Wehrheim and Debbie Hough. Not pictured is Beth Hayes.
Debbie fondly looks back on an “auction group,” which included Mary and a handful of other retired Christian educators who would get together several times a year to shop, eat, do puzzles and go to auctions.
“We maintained those relationships, and she was instrumental in that, even up to the end,” Debbie said of Mary. “It was a real sisterhood. It became a fun adventure.”
Nationally, Mary was the first national staff person for the Presbyterians Organized in Nurture and Teaching (POINT) program, and she assisted with curriculum development at the General Assembly’s Curriculum Publishing office in Louisville where she helped write the Covenant People Curriculum. In 2013, Mary was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Partners in Church Educators (APCE).
Even into retirement, Mary was still doing her part to promote the work of Christian education.
“Even as she was going into different phases of her life, the continuing care for education and young people as two separate things, that made her special,” Susan said. “She had a vision that didn’t seem like it was difficult for her to maintain what the pluses and minuses were as we sought to serve education and young people through the different layers of our church.”
Mary’s impact has been felt by many.
“She’s one of those important people, when I look back on my ministry and life,” Charlie said. “My dad and her dad were both contemporaries in Donegal Presbytery. She was like an older sister.
“When you lose someone like her, you’re losing a bunch of history in the church. When any great person dies, there’s a hole.”
“I’ll miss her smile,” Susan added, “because when Mary smiled, you knew it was good or you were doing the right thing.”
As Mary’s health declined, the calico cat Mary had gotten from Debbie stayed by her side. Mary renamed the cat she received around Christmas “Noell,” and it provided support for her during her final days.
“That cat nursed Mary,” Debbie said, recalling her final visit with Mary a few days before she passed away. “When I was over there, Noell was right there with her. That was her cat.”
It’s one of many lasting memories Debbie will have of Mary.
“It’s a huge loss for us as individuals but also for the church,” Debbie said. “She modeled what it was to be a Christian educator. If you were paying attention, you could learn a lot.”
Mary is survived by her husband Jim, who was the stated clerk in the Presbytery of Carlisle for many years and is known throughout the region. A service of Witness to the Resurrection for Mary will be held at Mechanicsburg Presbyterian Church on Saturday, May 10, at 2 p.m.
The Synod of the Trinity is thankful for Mary’s work and service to the region and sends condolences to her family and friends.