Field, Mary Josephine Laflin

Mary Josephine Laflin Field (Mary Jo or MJ), life-long Chicagoan and great great grand daughter of Chicago pioneer Matthew Laflin, died at home on Friday, August 13th with her children by her side. She was 82. Mary Jo was loved by all who knew her for her openness and generosity of spirit, and for a certain mixture of vulnerability and enduring enthusiasm for life in the face of considerable personal challenges and hardships. She was admired for her intelligence, her wit, and her many talents. As one friend put it, “I was constantly amazed by her intelligence and talent and loved the way she often hid all of that behind her incredible physical beauty. I never knew anyone remotely like her.” Mary Jo was born in New Haven Connecticut in 1939 to Louis E Laflin, a Yale Ph.D student at the time, and June Kennedy Laflin of Pittsburgh. She grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois and attended the Bell School, The Ethel Walker’s School, and Radcliffe College, where she studied Middle English literature. While at Radcliffe she became engaged to Harvard Law student David Ward, also of Lake Forest. They married and settled in Chicago, and had two children, April and David. They later divorced but remained friends throughout their lives. As a single mother, Mary Jo attended the Illinois Institute of Technology, receiving a degree in Industrial Design. Her passion for design and architecture were integral to her love for Chicago. She immersed herself in Chicago’s architectural tradition and the city’s many other cultural riches. She was a member of The Arts Club of Chicago and The Friday Club, and she was a champion of The Chicago Academy of Sciences. She was irrepressibly creative and continued to invent, design, and build interesting and beautiful things throughout her life - furniture, chess sets, radiator covers, lamps, and much more. Among her other educational accomplishments, Mary Jo attended electrical engineering school and became a licensed electrician so that she could create luminal kinetic sculptures and neon art. She was a tinkerer and a handy-woman who owned her own table saw. “That was what was so paradoxical about her, that she could design and make all those difficult and useful things that one associates usually with men, and yet remain so glamorous, feminine and even delicate”, said a close friend. In 1974 Mary Jo met the lawyer and mariner, Henry Field, to whom she remained happily married for twenty two years, becoming an enthusiastic seafaring woman, first mate, and expert boat outfitter. Of her artistic accomplishments Henry says, “she created wonderful, new, remarkable things of beauty, for example a neon textile weaving that illuminated gloriously on the wall, and an electrified industrial dolly that blinked on through the plastic feet in random sequences, also on the wall although it must have weighed 300 lbs. Whatever she did, it was opening new ground, untrodden by even teachers and masters in the field. She had a famous collection of auto hood ornaments she assembled before anyone had the slightest idea they might be objects of merit. We liberated a number of the best examples from junkyards throughout the midwest. A fifteen minute movie she created and narrated called The Hood Ornament with era-specific music and narration by Mary Jo was sought out by media people, but she refused to make a deal since she didn’t like her voice. A unique and special talent who was modest about her gifts. Too damn modest”. As much as Mary Jo loved Chicago, she was not a fan of cold weather and over the past twenty years she cultivated a life in the Spanish Colonial city of San Miguel de Allende during the winter months. There she fell in love with Mexican culture, learned to speak Spanish, formed many important friendships, and met John Simonds, who became her partner of many years. Plans are in the works to remember her there on November 2nd and again in February of 2022. Plans for a memorial event in Chicago (and/or online) are pending. Mary Jo is survived by her two children, April Ward Bodman, David Harris Ward Jr., and four grandchildren, Matthew Bodman, Daisy Bodman, George Ward, and Lucy Ward. She was predeceased by her brother Louis Ellsworth Laflin III and her sister June Laffin.

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