She was always known by the nickname "Mimi". She was a poet and an artist who did wood block prints, quite abstracted, of animals and trees, and fine ink brush drawings from nature. Mimi never sold her art, but gave or bartered it away. She lived in Minneapolis from birth until 11 March 1950 at 4220 16th Avenue South. She then moved (at age 4) with her mother and brother to Camp (Big Sand Lake, Dorset, Minnesota) while her father was stationed with the Army in Korea. She then moved to Durlach (near Karlsruhe), Germany with her family where her father was stationed from 1952-55 and moved back to Dorset permanently (at age 9) when her father retired from the Army in 1955. Mimi graduated from Park Rapids High School. She started Moorhead State College in Moorhead, Minnesota in September 1964, as an art major, but switched to elementary education with a minor in art. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1970 and in September of that year she started two years of teaching at the Pine Point Experimental School on the White Earth Indian Reservation in Minnesota. She taught children with special learning and behavioral problems (SLBP). Mimi married Peter Wilson of Park Rapids on 26 July 1972 in Park Rapids. For their honeymoon they rode around southeastern Hubbard County in a horse-drawn two wheeled covered cart, bartering sketches for meals with farmers and resort operators. Mimi and Peter moved to Minneapolis later in 1972, and lived near the University of Minnesota at 636 Erie Street South East. She volunteered as an art teacher and again taught SLBP in a special program for students from around the this country and Canada, at Fairview St. Mary's Hospital, across the Mississippi River from the University. Peter was a clerk in a Minneapolis shoe store when he was shot in the abdomen during a robbery in January 1973. In 1974 Mimi visited India. She saw the Taj Mahal and throngs of devotees milling along the Ganges for Khumba Mela at Hardwar. She enjoyed an elephant ride there, and later a camel ride in Japan. In the 1975-1976 school year Mary and Peter taught English at the Tak School, Fukuoka, Japan. While there, she continued drawing Sumi-e ink sketches and writing poetry. She was interviewed with a Japanese silk screen artist and ethnomusicologist, Ohba Masao on local television. She visited the studios of several potters and artists, including her favorite, Shiko Munkata. Mimi and Peter divorced in 1984. Peter was transferred by the Social Security Administration to Monterey, California, and Mimi remained in Minneapolis, but they continued to spend vacations together and communicated weekly by phone and letter. Neither remarried. After Mimi developed ovarian cancer, Peter moved back to Minneapolis to care for her, and they remarried on 27 September 1991 in Minneapolis. She died at age 46 of ovarian cancer, 20 months after her diagnosis, at their home at 800 University Avenue South East, Apartment #12, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55414. She died at home on 13 September 1992, tended by her college friend, Judy Osburn, and Peter. ®175 Mary Wilson's ashes are scattered on the grave of her grandmother, Mary Beckwith Moody,  Greenwood Cemetery, Park Rapids, Hubbard County, Minnesota, USA Plot: Block 201, Lot 3, gr1 

“ Mary “Mimi” Elizabeth Anderson Wilson was born on 1 July 1946 at Fort Snelling, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Her ancestry was Norwegian and English. Her father, Sophus Marcus Anderson (1907-200)], was stationed at Fort Snelling as a cavalryman, polo player, cartographer, and poster painter. Marc was an excellent watercolorist. Mimi’s mother, Mary Moody, (1911-1984) taught school in Park Rapids and in Walker, Minnesota for many years.  
   Mary’s grandfather, Reverend Arnold Edwin Moody (1874-1928) bought a cabin in 1911 on the south shore of Big Sand Lake near Park Rapids, Minnesota.  He called his land "Camp" after Boy Scout camps, of which he was an early proponent.  It included a half mile of shoreline from the Balley-Fletcher home on the east to a swamp on the west.     
   Mary's grandmother, Mary Izabell Beckwith Moody (1874-1959) was a remarkable lady, born in Macon, Georgia, then lived in Marietta, then Augusta, then Savannah, all in Georgia and by 1900 lived and married in Havana, Cuba. She lived with the Andersons on Big Sand Lake and became my surrogate grandmother after my own grandmother died in 1948. In 1949 the cottage at “Camp” was not yet winterized.  Because Marc was stationed near Nagasaki, Japan, Mary, her brother Steve, her mother & her grandmother spent the winter of 1949-50 with the Wiediger family in their large apartment behind Bishop's store in Park Rapids, Minnesota.
   In high school Mary was a student of Jon Hassler, who encouraged her to write, and of a kind art teacher who allowed her to decorate a wall of the art classroom with a mural.  
   Mary graduated from Moorhead State College, Moorhead, Minnesota in May 1966, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Arts and Education.  She taught at the Pine Point Elementary School in Ponsford, Minnesota from 1969 to 1972. Two of her pupils there were her flower girls, along with her god-child, Debra Osburn, at her wedding.   
   Mary was a teacher, poet and visual artist in many media, including Sumi-e ink brush drawings and woodcut prints.  She had a lyrical spirit and an inquiring mind.   She was unobtrusive and nonjudgmental. It would never have occurred to her to try to become something, much less pretend to be something.  She was complete in herself.   
   Mary was a fearless explorer. In 1974 she visited Rishikesh, in north India, with a group of students of Swami Rama, although she herself had a unique, pantheistic religious perspective. She rode an elephant to live out a fantasy from Kipling's Jungle Books, and she quoted the wisdom of Kaa, the python, about anger being the egg of fear.  She believed that strong emotion was the enemy of simple civility and self restraint.  She returned from India with ulcerative colitis, which kept her from working the next year.  
   Her courage was hereditary.  Mary's great grandmother Sarah Laura Wright, born in 1848, wrote in a 1902 letter, "I had the great happiness of my grandmother’s companionship until long past my maturity.” I will give the revered names of five generations of Georgia ladies who engendered Mary's spirit, starting in 1802: Jane Martin Carmichael Ringland Eve, mother of Mary Isabelle Eve Wright, mother of Sarah Laura Wright Beckwith (1848-1927), mother of Mary Izabell Beckwith Moody, mother of Mary Isabel Moody Anderson, mother of Mary Elizabeth Anderson Wilson.  Mary was thus the fifth generation who enjoyed many years with their mothers and grandmothers, in times when parents often died too young to be remembered.  This succession of strong mother/daughter bonds preserved skills, wisdom and cultural attitudes which were unique.  
   On 26 July 1972 Mary married Peter Wiediger Wilson (class of 1960) in Park Rapids in an Episcopal ceremony (and later in a Hindu ceremony). She wore her grandmother's snood over her hair.  Her bridesmaids were Sonja Boeringer, from Big Sand Lake, and Judith Osburn, from Moorhead State College and Albert Lea Minnesota. The honeymoon was spent riding around southern Hubbard County in a two wheeled "conestoga" wagon, built for her by Mr. Sackett, pulled by Mary's horse Damon, and accompanied by her dog,Toby, from Pine Point.  Vince Arvik boarded Damon for almost ten years. Mary and Peter lived in Minneapolis Minnesota and Fukuoka Japan, and reunited in Carmel California every summer after their divorce in 1984.  They remarried in 1991 when Mary became ill with ovarian cancer, and they once again lived in Minneapolis Minnesota. They shared a love for nature from their childhood together.  
   In 1975-1976 both Mary and Peter taught English at Terada private school in Fukuoka, on the southern island of Kyushu, Japan. They were treated kindly there.  Students took Mary to watch traditional paper making. They both went to watch a master potter apply a glaze to a set of pots, which he did with complete focus of mind.  Mary was interviewed on television with Ohba Masao (1928-2000?), a silk screen artist and ethnomusicologist, who invited her to his home and studio. She also visited the studio of Toshi Yoshida, an artist with connections at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  Also in Tokyo, Mary and Peter stayed with Seijo economics professor Hideo Kanemitsu and his American wife, Sue Disney.  At Dazaifu shrine in Fukuoka they honored Sugawara no Michazane (845-903), deified as a patron of poetry.  
   Another host showed them his bonsai rice, which bore ripe grain at 4 inches tall.  They visited a wildlife park owned by the Duke of Bedford on the eastern side of Kyushu, where Mary rode a camel and fed tame deer. They looked into the caldera of Mount Aso, a volcano near Kumamoto, before taking a white water boat ride down the Kumagawa River. Later they saw Sakurajima, another volcano near Kagoshima, and slept under a lean-to of branches in a Cryptomeria forest.  
   From 1977 to 1990 Mary taught art and English in Minneapolis schools. She tutored teenagers with special learning and behavioral problems in a treatment program at Fairview Hospital. Students in the program came from around the United States and Canada.  She had to refresh her mathematics skills because she was responsible for keeping them up with all the subjects they were missing in their home schools. Her fellow teacher and artist, Bonnie Dean, pointed out that tutoring little addicts one-on-one was easier than riding herd on thirty thoughtless fidgets. 
   In August, 1991, Mary and Marcus had a father/daughter art exhibit at the Robin Gallery in Robbinsdale Minnesota. Mary showed her wood block prints and Marc showed his watercolor landscapes. Mary also published a group of poems she named “Camp”, about images from her childhood.  
   Mary died of cancer on 13 September 1992, at age 46, in Minneapolis.  
Here is a poem Mary wrote in memory of a visit to Cologne Cathedral. She lived in Durlach, near Karlshrue, Baden-Baden, Germany from 1952 to 1954:
        COLOGNE CATHEDRAL
I remember as a child the sun shone through the flesh,
A hand so old and thin the surface cracked
Between the bright warm day, the long dark hall.
Medieval glass is not the glass we have today 
That’s hard and smooth, but soft and vulnerable.
It’s only purpose was to stain the light
In those dark halls of saints and sinners,
Bleeding rainbows on the floor.  
Now when I raise my hand against the sun
I see a halo round my flesh, a dark and solid palm.
Old glass dissolving in the rain,
Old stone crumbling from within.
Cathedral in the mist where have we gone? ”

By Peter Michael Wiediger Wilson December 2014