Here at AP, which your solitary reporter has edited for many, many years, he has never mentioned his family.
But on March 31, 2021, the Love of His Life, Mary Jane Mullarkey, died of pneumonia, end stage multiple sclerosis, and dysphagia (inability to swallow) and, following the tradition in our society, he was there as she bid farewell.
Mary was born in New London, Wisconsin, on September 28, 1943, the fourth of five children of Isabelle Steffes Mullarkey and John Clifford Mullarkey, and their only daughter. She leaves behind four brothers in Wisconsin, Florida, and Arizona.
She was educated in parochial school at the Church of the Most Precious Blood in New London and at Washington High School, also in New London. We were married on July 24, 1971, at St. Patrick’s Church in Lebanon Township, Wisconsin, a lovely fieldstone church in the countryside.
In high school, she excelled in debating; and that prefigured her later outstanding service as a lawyer and, as well, her 23 years of service as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Colorado. During her last 12 years on that Court, she served with great distinction as Chief Justice, the longest serving Chief Justice in Colorado history and as Colorado’s first woman Chief Justice.
She majored in Mathematics at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, where, by report, she was so good in Math that some of her classmates avoided math classes. Then she went to Harvard Law School, a totally male bastion at the time, where she took classes including Chinese Criminal Law. Her first job as a lawyer was at the U S Department of the Interior, where she specialized, at first, in water and power law, and then as the sole Interior Department attorney working on equal employment opportunity law under Executive Orders 11246 and 11375, both issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Her work at the Interior Department occurred during the presidency of President Nixon.
We were married for nearly 50 years.
We have an outstanding son, Andrew Steffes Korson who, with his wonderful wife Emily Terhune Korson, and their two daughters, Anika Mary Korson (11) and Avery Wallace Korson (9), live in Denver.
I, your solitary reporter, spoke at her Mass of Christian Burial at Cure d’Ars Catholic Church in Denver, a predominantly African American parish, on April 13; and on April 26, my son Andrew spoke at a secular Celebration of her Life at the Denver Botanic Gardens. The host of that Celebration was Larry Theis, a longtime friend.
To honor Mary’s truly outstanding contributions to Colorado, several of her law clerks are working on a process to create a scholarship named for her, to encourage law students of diverse backgrounds, including LGTBQ people, who commit to public service. Mary always had very interesting and devoted law clerks, and diversity and commitment to public service were hallmarks of her career.
Turning now to our usual work-in-chief, we here at AP are compelled to report that the U S Senate's two stalwart Independents, Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and Angus King (Maine) have broken with their own personal and political traditions by converting to the Democratic Faith.
Bernie nearly defeated former Empire State Senator and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham in 2016, in the Democratic primary; and Senator King, very popular in the only State whose name consists of only one syllable, was a popular Governor there as well. Senator King is the Junior Senator from Maine. Senator Susan Collins is a Republican, and, as many people in the US know, she and moderate to conservative Democratic senator from West Virginia, the fiercely independent Joe Manchin, have more power than most Senators because Mitch McConnell missed his bet of once again being Senate Majority Leader when Georgia went Blue in 2020 and 2021.
Back to Tom: Tom was always dependent on Mary, and it was mutual. Today, Tom is not independent, but he is doing his best to figure out what his future may be as we celebrate the birth of this exceptional nation, which began as an experiment.