Writer, teacher, mediator, college administrator, wife, stepmother, sister, aunt, feminist, truth-seeker and –teller, and cancer voyager, Mary Childers, 70, succumbed to the blood cancer multiple myeloma on April 13, 2023, in the ICU at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

As recounted in Welfare Brat: A Memoir (Bloomsbury, 2005), Mary was one of seven living children with a mostly single mother who grew up poor in dangerous neighborhoods in the Bronx. Reviewers wrote that it is "a powerful book with poetic prose that sings and moans" and "poignant with astonishing honesty and grace."

Mary started college at 16, the first in her family to do so, and began her encounter with an alien world.  Years later, she completed her education with a PhD in English Literature.

A multi-talented academic, Mary held teaching and administrative positions at the University of Maine-Orono, Vanderbilt, Dartmouth, Oberlin, Cincinnati, Villanova, and the Pembroke Center at Brown.  At Dartmouth she was the director of the Women's Resource Center, director of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, Special Assistant to the President, and director of Capital Giving in Development.  After a number of years as Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences at Brandeis, Mary returned to Dartmouth, becoming its first-ever Ombuds Officer until she retired as Ombuds Emerita.

Mary is survived by her husband, local psychologist Bruce L. Levine; stepson Gideon (San Francisco); sisters Deborah (Guilderland, NY), Candi (Phoenix), Tami (NYC), Tracy (Mesa, Ariz.), and brother Dwayne (E. Greenbush, NY) ; niece Adriel and grand-nieces Camille and Maeve (all of Alexandria, Va.); nephew Jonah (Guilderland, NY); and many other nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews.

Mary was active in a local group involved in a years-long effort on behalf of "green" or "natural" burial and will be so interred at the West Lebanon cemetery.

Writing in the third person, Mary left explicit instructions: "Rather than a funeral, she wants to have an end-of-life party before she dies.  When she is dying, the selective presence of others, solitude, and having said goodbyes will be important to her."  Please imagine participating in that end-of-life party and goodbyes to a fierce, wry, loving and generous individual.  She impacted many, many lives and will be deeply missed.