Mary L. Nash, active churchwoman

Mary L. Nash, an active Episcopal churchwoman and homemaker, died April 29 from complications of dementia at Sunrise Assisted Living in Washington. The former Ruxton resident was 85.

Mary Leigh Speer was born in Baltimore. She was the daughter of John Littleton Dawson Speer Jr., a Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. engineer, and Grace Brown Fisher Speer, a homemaker.

She was raised on Broxton Road in Homeland, and after the death of her mother when she was 12, she moved to a half-sister’s home on Ruxton Road in Ruxton.

She was a 1950 graduate of Roland Park Country School, where she was goalie for the lacrosse and hockey teams.

While on a summer weekend trip with school friends in 1950 to the Chalfonte Hotel in Cape May, N.J., she met her future husband, Edgar Nash, whom she fell in love with and married two years later.

The couple settled in Ruxton, where they raised their three children.

She was a communicant of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Ruxton, where she was an active volunteer, and also volunteered with Meals On Wheels of Central Maryland.

Mrs. Nash enjoyed entertaining family and friends, playing tennis and caring for her family of Brittany spaniels. She also liked attending the theater in Baltimore and New York, especially musicals, family members said.

In 1984, she and her husband, who was a principal in Critchlow, Nash & Crouch, a real estate firm, moved to St. Michaels, where he continued his career. He died in 2014.

Mrs. Nash was a volunteer for Talbot County Special Riders as a walker for handicapped children. She also continued working with Meals On Wheels in Talbot County and drove cancer patients to medical appointments.

She was a parishioner and docent at historic Christ Episcopal Church in St. Michaels, which dates to 1672 and whose present building was built in 1878.

A memorial service for Mrs. Nash will be held at 10:30 a.m. June 8 at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd on Carrollton and Boyce avenues in Ruxton.

She is survived by two sons, Edgar Dawson Nash of Washington and David Hatton Nash of Chicago; a daughter, Mary Nash Massey of Camden, Maine; and four grandchildren.