Mary Lou Coleman
May 9, 1937 - February 18, 2026
Mary Lou Coleman, librarian, cat lover and the world’s biggest fan of the 1950s crooner Johnnie Ray, died Feb 18, 2026 in Denver. She was 88.
Mary Lou was born May 9, 1937, in Detroit, Mich., to Val and Mary Sontag. After attending Catholic school, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Mercy College and a master’s degree in library science from the University of Michigan. She worked as a children’s librarian in Ann Arbor.
Books were the most important material things in her life, and she surrounded herself with them. She filled her shelves with works by Thomas Hardy, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, David Lodge and others. She often quoted the line “Richer than I you can never be – I had a mother who read to me,” from a poem by Strickland Gillilan.
She married Edward Robert Coleman, and they had three daughters. In 1969 the family moved to Austin, where Mary Lou worked at JC Penney, then at a small bookstore, and finally the Old Quarry Public Library. After the couple divorced, Mary Lou moved to Chicago, where she worked as a librarian, first in a book-mobile and later at a branch in what was then a sketchy part of the city.
In 2000, she renovated an old home her parents had bought on a bluff above Lake Michigan in South Haven, Mich. She was frugal, furnishing it with second-hand furniture and even a few cardboard boxes draped in tablecloths. She decorated one room to replicate the Vincent VanGogh painting “Bedroom in Arles,” complete with green floors, blue walls and a small rubber ear placed on a bedside table.
She spent 20 years in South Haven, entertaining friends on the back deck, where they could watch sunsets over Lake Michigan and live music in the park below. She volunteered at the library. She loved swimming, especially the side stroke, in Lake Michigan.
She was sometimes stubborn but had the kindest heart. She liked to wisecrack, telling her friends things like “Let me know what you need, and I’ll tell you how to get along without it.” Once, when a racoon carted off the contents of her cooler during a camping trip, she said, “If you think you’re having bacon and eggs for breakfast, you’re living in a fool’s paradise.”
She loved her cats Reno and Isabel Archer, named for a character in the Henry James novel “The Portrait of a Lady.”
She moved to Denver in 2021. Even into her 80s, she remained boy crazy. She loved her sons-in-law and always said "It's so nice to have a man around the house" whenever they visited, partly to tease her daughters. Once, after watching a Peter, Paul and Mary concert, she sang their hit song “Lemon Tree” over and over in the car, shifting to a higher octave each time.
She took fencing lessons and art history classes. She enjoyed travel, too, and visited Egypt, Ireland, Germany, France and England, but fancy hotels weren’t her style.
She rarely complained. When she was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia in 1999, she was proud to participate in an early clinical trial for the drug Gleevec.
She is survived by her three daughters and their husbands, Angela Marie (and John) Pierce of Denver, Nancy Allison (and Brad) Purifoy of Colleyville, and Pamela Ann (and Chris) LeBlanc of Austin; and two sisters, Maggie Harington and Carol Sontag, both of Detroit.
The family would like to thank the staff of Brookdale Lowry Senior Living Center in Denver and Brighton Hospice.
Photos of Mary Lou
