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September 10, 1928 - October 20, 2023
After fulfilling all of her duties as the consummate wife, mother and grandmother, Mary Ellen Harmon (nee Brown) died on October 20, 2023 at the Passavant Retirement Community where she had made her home since 2013 to be nearer to her children and their families. She was predeceased by her parents, John David and Marjorie Walter Brown; her three brothers, John, Shannon and William; and her high school sweetheart and husband of nearly 70 years, Dr. Roy Campbell Harmon Jr. in 2018. She is survived by her three children and their spouses (all of Pittsburgh): David (Susan), John (Anne) and June Navid (Forozan); eight grandchildren: Dave (Greta), Eric (Katie), Marjorie Weiner (Jared), Emily Weimer (Daniel), Roy, Walter, Nora and Sadie Navid; and ten great-grandchildren: Claire, Audrey, William, Rosemary and Summer Harmon, Andrew and Christian Weimer, and Eleanor, Charles and Dorothy Weiner.
Raised and spending almost all of her life (until her move to the Passavant Retirement Community in Zelienople) in Wheeling, West Virginia, she attended Triadelphia High School and West Liberty University. She married young and devoted herself to the care and support of her husband and their family with keen commitment.
In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, she participated in various auxiliary organizations: the Wheeling Symphony Society, the Ohio Valley Medical Center (through her local Twig) and her church through the Lutheran Church Women. She was an avid -- if not expert -- golfer, a voracious reader, a superb cook, an accomplished dancer and a creative and expert seamstress. But her principal focus was always her family -- and included an extended family of any and all children and young people in the neighborhood or in some way associated with her own children, with guests around the dinner table on many nights of the week.
After her children were grown, she spent the 1980s, '90s and 2000s serving as office manager for her husband's podiatry practice and was well known to and much beloved by his patients.
Noted for her physical beauty throughout her life, she will be remembered by her family and friends for the inner beauty that illumined her every interaction with others. Never demanding nor coaxing of her family, she simply had standards and expectations for each member of her family who, in their turn, strove to achieve them and will remain always grateful for the outcomes of the efforts to meet those expectations in their lives.
The family expresses its profound thanks to the kind and giving staff of Passavant Retirement Community for their loving care of their mother and grandmother.
There will be no public visitation. There will be a Requiem Eucharist at Seaman Memorial Chapel at the Passavant Retirement Community in Zelienople at 2 p.m. Saturday, October 28, with the Rev. Freda Snyder, Chaplain of Passavant Retirement Community, as preacher and the Rev. Brian Evans, senior pastor of the First Lutheran Church of Pittsburgh, as celebrant.
Arrangements have been made by Kepner Funeral Homes of Wheeling. Memorial contributions may be made to the Oglebay Foundation in care of Eriks Janelsins, 465 Lodge Drive, Wheeling, WV 26003-1967.