Mary Frances (Sheffield) Boughton

Mary Francis (Sheffield) Boughton was born April 11, 1929 in Sherman, Texas, just in time for the kick-off of the Great Depression. This was followed by her birth certificate being destroyed in the Grayson County courthouse fire of 1930, a marker in her memory she used to teach her children about the lynch mob that set the blaze. Next up in her infancy was surviving an accident in which she was thrown through a car windshield. Seat belts came later.

Despite these early bumps in the road, Mary thrived as a child and excelled as a student. After graduating high school as Salutatorian, she was refused the college scholarship her class Valedictorian passed on. Not one to wait for fortune to find her, she put herself through Texas Tech, graduating in 1954 with a Sociology degree.

The obvious next step for the shrinking violet was to leave the familiarity of home for a job in Alaska. When she wasn't working, Mary panned for gold, ate whale blubber, and sang in the church choir directed by her future husband, Bob.

Courtship ensued and after driving across Canada to attend their 1957 wedding in the lower 48, the young couple landed in Garnett, Kansas. Her children, Johanna, Scott, and Stuart, were introduced to the world there, and Elizabeth followed in 1965 after the move to Albuquerque. Mary did everything from mending jeans to helping with word problems to discouraging her sons from playing with matches to reconciling her own upbringing with her daughters' needs for autonomy. She religiously practiced an odd habit acquired during her Depression-era childhood that later became known as "recycling." She had remarkable tolerance for various combinations of four kids, two dogs, a cat, a goat, a horse, and scattered rabbits and chickens. In summers there was the annual trek to Ghost Ranch where she scratched her paleontology itch by participating in dinosaur digs.

With the kids moving in the right direction Mary went back to work with a stint teaching school, work at a law firm, and finally a job in the UNM political science department, before retiring in 1994.

Not surprisingly, retirement didn't mean pausing for long. There were causes to volunteer for and visits to her children locally and around the country. Membership in the UNM chorale afforded the opportunity for trips to England and the Middle East, and Mary and Bob made a return trip to their Alaska origins in 2004.

In her later years she was aware of her cognitive decline, noting that she remembered names but there were no faces associated with them. But this was just another hurdle to overcome, as she maintained an extensive collection of slides and photos to share with others, documenting the many events throughout the lives of her and her family. When Mary passed on Saturday, October 17, 2020, it marked the end of a very rich life, and the lives of her family and friends are much richer for her having shared it with them.

Mary is survived by her husband, Bob; her children, Johanna Stackpole, Scott Boughton, Stuart Boughton and Elizabeth Bennett; and her grandchildren, Katrina, James, and Joseph Stackpole, Alex and Jordan Bennett, and Yiming Zhu.

In lieu of flowers, you may donate to Heifer International, http://www.heifer.org/ or Habitat for Humanity, https://www.habitat.org/