Mary Althouse Eikel's Obituary
Mary Althouse Eikel died July 28, 2023 at Silverado Memory Care in Escondido.
Mary was born October 18, 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland, where her father Paul Althouse was pastor of Grace Reformed Church. As a small girl she lived in St. Louis with her mother Ora Belle Crow Althouse while her father served as an Army chaplain in the Pacific theater. A brother, Paul Jr., was born in 1943.
After the war, the family settled in Frederick, Maryland, which at the time was a small country town. She lived in the parsonage in the town center, attended local grade schools, was a Girl Scout, and like her father was a Senators and Redskins fan.
Mary graduated in 1958 from Northfield School in Massachusetts in and in 1962 from Wellesley College with a degree in zoology. She worked during her college summers in the lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland. She received a master’s in teaching from Johns Hopkins after which she taught science at Castilleja School in Palo Alto. Upon her return to the East Coast in 1964 she did laboratory work at The Children's Cancer Research Foundation in Boston.
Mary first met Bob Eikel while she was in graduate school at Johns Hopkins, and reconnected with him while living in Boston. They married in June 1967 and moved to New York, where they both worked as management consultants. Mary and Bob moved to San Diego in 1970 for a temporary work assignment, expected to last six months. They soon realized that they didn’t want to move back to New York and the short term visitors became long term residents, living in La Jolla for fifty more years.
Mary completed law school at the University of San Diego in 1974 and began her legal practice as a prosecutor in the San Diego City Attorney’s office. She soon moved to appellate practice and made her career at the Fourth District Court of Appeals, retiring as Principal Attorney in 2003. Mary was a member and chair of the State Bar Commission on Corrections and a member of the Judicial Council Advisory Committee to Study Legislative Proposals on Trial Court Unification. She was contributing editor of the California practice guide to civil appeals and writs and the author of “The California Court of Appeal Step by Step”, which helps self-represented individuals navigate the appellate system.
Mary was a lifelong musician and music lover. As a girl she played piano, sang in the church choir, and once filled in for an ill organist at church on Sunday. After college she appeared productions with The Opera Group of Boston and various Gilbert and Sullivan productions at MIT. She and Bob were patrons of the San Diego Opera, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, and Bach Collegium San Diego.
Mary was unfailingly kind and generous, often stepping into the breach when a colleague, friend, child, or fellow Wellesley alum needed support. She was always ready to open her home to visitors and guests, and hosted countless parties, receptions, and celebrations—at which she was usually to be found cooking in the kitchen—for Bob's railfan friends, her children's rowing teams, international students, and friends-of-friends brought into the fold along the way. She tirelessly managed both her career and her household and excelled at both.
Mary was for many years a faithful member of All Saints Episcopal Church in Hillcrest, and later of St. Michael’s in Carlsbad and St. James By-the-Sea in La Jolla.
Mary is survived by her brother Paul Althouse, of Woolwich, Maine; children Catherine, of San Marcos, and Robert, of West Hartford, Connecticut; and six grandchildren. Funeral services will be held at St. James By-the-Sea in La Jolla at 11:00 a.m. on August 24; she will be buried at a later date in Houston.
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