Mary White died not from a fall from her horse but from a blow to the head by a low-hanging tree limb as she rode through Emporia after a day of school work and work on the High School Annual. Known for years in town as a lively young rider who waved to friends as she passed, she was energetic, humorous, mischievous without malice, and widely acquainted with people across the community. She loved books, read widely from childhood, and was entered as a student in Wellesley in 1922. She served as assistant editor of the High School Annual, belonged to the executive committee of the High School Y.W.C.A., and had begun to find early success as a cartoonist, with drawings accepted for the High School Annual and for the Normal Annual. She delighted in filling her car with riders of every sort and found special joy in helping others, including organizing a turkey dinner for poor residents at the county home, gathering rags for an elderly blind Black man who made rag rugs, and pressing for a rest room for Black girls at the High School. She joined the Congregational Church because she saw it as a means of helping people, cared little for clothes or jewelry, and clung to childhood with a strong resistance to growing up. Her funeral at the Congregational Church was simple and shaped by the music and people she loved, and her friends served as pallbearers.