Mary Elizabeth Larson Howe

Mary Elizabeth Larson Howe, former longtime resident of Mont Vernon, NH, currently of Merrimack, NH, passed peacefully on September 25, 2024, at Community Hospice House in Merrimack, NH, surrounded by friends and family. 

Mary was born on April 23, 1931, to Arthur and Elsie Larson, and raised in the small farming town of Thompson in the heart of Winnebago County, Iowa. Arthur owned and ran the local hardware store.

Mary went to college at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, class of 1953, where she studied home economics education, and then went on to teach at public schools in Hutchinson, MN and Coos Bay, OR. She met her future husband, Charles Henry Shafer Howe, in Coos Bay where he was working at the Bureau of Land Management as a forester. They married, and moved to Salem, OR where Chuck became a lawyer, and they had two children, Jana Elizabeth Howe and Charles Stephen Howe.

 Mary possessed a great sense of adventure and humor. She had a wonderful ability to laugh at herself, and a deep love for her friends and family. These strengths saw her through moves from Oregon to California and New Hampshire where Mary created loving homes in each new place. These strengths also saw her through the early death of her husband, and a slow and lengthy struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. 

Mary loved to help others. She was an active church member her whole life long. She has been a member of the Congregational Church of Amherst for over 40 years, where she has been a trustee, a deacon, a member of the Women’s Association and a member of both the bell choir and the choir. She has driven patients to doctor appointments for FISH, volunteered for the Souhegan Nursing Association and Monadnock Music, and has been a long-term member of P.E.O. Chapter F, among other things.

Mary is survived by her daughter Jana Elizabeth Howe and her son C. Stephen Howe and his wife, Tracy, and his children Paxton and Chase Howe.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, October 12, 2024, at 11:00 AM in the Amherst Congregational Church, 11 Church Street, Amherst Village. Burial will be private. 

In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory may be made to Community Hospice House of Merrimack, New Hampshire Audubon Society and the New Hampshire SPCA.