In Business or Baking, Kindness Prevailed

As a young wife and mother of four in the decades after World War I, Mary E. Jarrell stayed on the go. She regularly gathered up her youngsters for trips to the National Zoo, the Washington Monument and the National History Museum and took part in their school activities.

Her social calendar spilled over with dancing and dinners for her husband's Shriners and Realtor events, silver teas given by the Woodside Park Civic Association, luncheons from the Ladies Aid Society of the Woodside Methodist Church, and card parties and Christmas Eve celebrations at her home. From the early 1930s to the late 1940s, her name appeared as Mrs. Karl E. Jarrell on The Washington Post's society pages as her husband's prominence increased.

Her life changed abruptly when her husband of 27 years died at age 50 during the Christmas season of 1953. But Jarrell, then 46, mustered her trademark energy -- she was known for talking and walking fast -- and took over the insurance and real estate business that her husband had operated, the Thos. E. Jarrell Co. The firm was founded in the early 1920s by her father-in-law, who developed Wynnewood Park, which is now a part of Woodside Park in Silver Spring.

A Washington native and 1924 graduate of the old Central High School, who had attended George Washington University, Jarrell had not prepared herself for a career in business. But practicality and resourcefulness led her to step into a new life, one alien to many suburban housewives of the mid-1950s.

"I need more income, and I've got this business. I'll see what I can do," her oldest daughter, Mary J. Smith, recalled her mother saying. "She was not a true businesswoman, but she managed . . . by trying to do what was right."

Jarrell was president of the small firm, which was located in the District, first on 10th Street NW and, until 1987, in the Homer building on 13th St. NW. She retired at 80 -- and then she made pound cakes, hundreds of them, until about four years ago. Mary Elizabeth Shoemaker Jarrell died at age 100 on July 27 after a stroke but not before she touched the lives of scores of people as a businesswoman and a baker of "acts of kindness."

Before the poundcakes, Jarrell made vegetable soup for people who were ailing and brownies and sand tarts for relatives and friends. She also made pine cone wreaths for Christmas and sent one to former first lady Barbara Bush, for whom she had great respect, after she couldn't figure out how to get a poundcake through White House security.

One of her grandsons, Thomas E. Jarrell III, recalled his grandmother's frequent trips to garage sales and thrift stores to buy items that she thought someone would need.

At the firm that she sold in 1987, Jarrell took a personal interest in each client, her daughter said. "She was selling them insurance, but she also could help them through some bumps."

Throughout her life, her interest in people never waned. Instead, it increased. She would stop and talk to people on the streets, and she reached out to people of various circumstances, said her son, Thomas E. Jarrell II. His mother's largesse did have it limits, however.

"She had a stranger on the street come up to her for money," and she suggested he get a job, the son recounted. "She would help you if you help yourself."

Warren Ebinger, pastor emeritus of Woodside United Methodist Church, knew Jarrell since 1977. About 20 years ago, his wife, Mary, invited Jarrell to speak on aging to her class at Frederick Community College. Jarrell brought a poundcake with her and astounded the class with her energy and outlook on life, he said.