Mary Barbara Berthiaume
- Published: June 20, 2025
Mary Barbara Berthiaume, née Kraus, was born in Baltimore on Sept. 4, 1935, the first child of second-generation German immigrants. She attended parochial school (with boys), but an all-girls Catholic high school, Notre Dame of Maryland, and a college of the same name, on the same grounds. There she began as a chemistry major, switched to music when paternal support of her wish to be a doctor was lacking, and after graduation left home for Washington, D.C., and worked on a master’s degree in music at Catholic University.
In Washington, she fell in love with and married Robert Berthiaume, a handsome, guitar-playing charmer of French-Canadian origin, and an Air Force veteran. Their idyllic marriage, which produced two children, son Mare and daughter Theresa, was troubled and sadly ended in divorce some years later, when Mary was reduced to her own quite ample resources. She took up computering, as her father had done in the ’40s and ’50s, and entered upon a long career, working first for NASA. She monitored computers in Australia during the last moon shot and then in the Anti-Submarine Warfare Program at the Patuxent Naval Air Station.
She lived for many years in Calvert County in southern Maryland in a large house built almost single-handedly by her son, Mare, where she often entertained the extended family. In retirement, she moved to southeast Arizona to live near her nurse-daughter, Terri, and there she recently died, on Memorial Day.
Mary is survived by her daughter, Theresa, of Huachuca City, Arizona; by three brothers and a sister: Michael, of Yellow Springs, Richard and wife, Patricia, of New Carlisle, Ohio, Frances and husband, Mark Tyler, of Edmond, Oklahoma, and Philip, of Belair, Maryland; four grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and a throng of grand-nieces and grand-nephews.
There will be a memorial Mass of Requiem at St. Paul at 10 a.m. on Friday, June 27, and subsequent burial of Mary’s ashes in the parish cemetery.
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