Mary Lou Baender
BAENDER, ROUGH, SCHULER, AZMY
Posted By: Sarah Fletcher (email)
Date: 4/29/2024 at 08:49:00
Mary Lou Baender, 89, of Iowa City passed away on April 13, 2024 at Crestview Specialty Care.
Mary Lou was born on May 27, 1934, in Los Angeles, California, to John and Dorothy (Schuler) Rough. She graduated from Hollywood High School and the University of California at Berkeley. She did graduate work at the University of Chicago and held a master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Iowa.
She married Paul Baender in 1957 in Los Angeles. The couple spent their first years of marriage in Chicago and eventually settled in Iowa City. Later in life she fulfilled her lifelong dream of European travel and took great pleasure in visiting England, France, Italy and the Netherlands.
Mary Lou will be remembered for her culinary gifts (she trained herself as a gourmet chef using Julia Child as her guide), her keen appreciation for art and design, her fascination with birds and the natural world, her encyclopedic knowledge of wonderful old films, her stories of early 20th century Los Angeles, and her ready sense of humor.
She is survived by two children, Jeremy Paul Baender of Iowa City, IA, and Margo Brett Baender of Brooklyn, NY, and her granddaughter, Laila Hart Azmy.
Mary Lou was preceded in death by her parents, husband Paul in 2006, son Thomas (Tom) in 2023, and two siblings, Doris and John.
Private interment will be held at Oakland Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be directed to Iowa City Hospice, Goodwill of the Heartland, and the National Audobon Society.
Dark Brow
By Marvin Bell
The dark brow of the creek wrinkles over time
as if something had been born there.
Scavenging all night, the water that runs there
brings things from time past.
Some of these things are the wrappers, the coats,
of what it meant to say, “I tasted”
or “I felt.” And this, whatever it is, is not that.
All of us have felt the fatigue of dark water,
the burden massed at yard’s edge,
and in the line of the garden
beyond the onions, there are fresh tears.
I do not say we should live forever,
for who could bear it,
only that we should one day enter completely into life.
In the beginning, as at the end, there was nothing
though “was” is the psychic’s verb,
the one that proves the existence of a current
by rising after it has passed
and shaking its head furiously, spraying water.
“I was,” we say. “Therefore, I am.” We also believe
a piece of us has washed away and may be worth something.
Lensing Funeral & Cremation Service
Johnson Obituaries maintained by Cindy Booth Maher.
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