Obituaries

She was born Mary Jean Sanford in St. Louis and grew up in Webster Groves, Mo. She graduated from Purdue University in Indiana, where she was a member of the Chi Omega sorority and the university choir.

She lived in Los Alamos, N.M., Richland, Wash., and Brunswick, Maine, before settling in McLean in 1956.

She was an accomplished watercolor artist who painted landscapes, lighthouses, still lifes and other scenes. She took classes over the years and exhibited her work along the East Coast.

Ms. Lowe also loved music and had a beautiful singing voice, a daughter said.

Her marriage to William Webb Lowe Jr. ended in divorce.

Survivors include five children, William Webb Lowe III of Hammonton, N.J., Judith Anne Lowe of McLean, Barbara Jean Lowe-Fierke of Northfield, Minn., Robert Sanford Lowe of Hatfield, Pa., and Jennifer Joan Foley of Catlett; 15 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

-- Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb

Doris H. BaumNIH Secretary

Doris H. Baum, 85, a former secretary at the National Institutes of Health, died Sept. 17 at her home in Bethesda. She had Alzheimer's disease.

Mrs. Baum was born in Annapolis and studied at Strayer University in Washington. She was a secretary with the War Department (later the Defense Department) from 1941 to 1956.

In 1978, she went back to work at NIH as an administrative assistant in the office of contract laboratory studies at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She retired in 1996.