September 29, 2005

OBITUARIES

Yolande ‘Yolie’ Mayne

Yolande “Yolie” Mayne died Sunday, Sept. 25, at Hospice of Dayton, following a sudden decline in her four-year fight with cancer. She was 79.

Born July 15, 1926, on Willette Plantation in rural Mississippi, she was the third of five children of Wallace and Yolande Carter. She graduated from Mississippi College in 1946 with a degree in chemistry.

Leaving the South was a major change in her life, both geographically and socially/politically. By 1952 she was working in a medical research lab at the Institute of Pathology of the University of Tennessee in Memphis. She followed that job first to the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland, then to the University of Utah. In Salt Lake City she met and married Berger Mayne in 1956. Their first child was born there in 1958. Their second child was born in Minneapolis, where they lived before coming to Yellow Springs in 1962.

Berger introduced her to a love of camping and outdoor activities, a love that has been passed on to her sons and grandchildren.

As her children moved on to high school and college, she went back to school and earned a master’s degree in economics from Wright State University in 1977. She then worked for the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission and the Green County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

In Yellow Springs Yolie was active in many community groups, including the Glen Helen Association, the Unitarian Fellowship, Green County Democratic Party, Library Association, Yellow Springs Bicycle Committee, Planned Parenthood of the Miami Valley and others. She was very interested in education, serving on the school board in the early 1970s and volunteering with reading classes at Mills Lawn School after her retirement. Throughout her life her political and social conscience was influenced by her experience growing up in the segregated South.

She is survived by two brothers, still living on the family farm in Mississippi; her husband, Berger; two sons, Leland and Walter; two daughters-in-law, Lynn McConville and Emily Mayne; two grandchildren, Peter and Eleanor; and many friends.

A memorial service will be held on Sunday, Oct. 23, at 1 p.m., at the First Presbyterian Church. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to either the Glen Helen Association, American Civil Liberties Union or Planned Parenthood.

Yolie was a third grade reading partner at Mills Lawn School for many years. A tree planting ceremony for Yolie will be held Friday, Sept. 30, 9:30 a.m., behind Mills Lawn School, on the third grade playground. Family and friends are invited to participate.

John M. (Jack) Birch

John M. (Jack) Birch of Yellow Springs died Friday, Sept. 23, in Friends Care Community. He was 84.

Jack was born Aug. 10, 1919, in Yellow Springs, the son of John H. and Dean Miller Birch. He was a 1937 graduate of Bryan High School. He worked at his father’s gas station and for two years attended Earlham College, Class of 1941. Jack was a mechanic at Wright-Patterson Air Field during World War II, studied at Coyne School, a trade-technical institute in Chicago, and worked as an electrical contractor in Yellow Springs. After the 1974 Xenia tornado he worked for Greene County as an electrical inspector, retiring in 1991.

Jack was a 30-year member of the Miami Township fire department. He was also a member of First Presbyterian Church of Yellow Springs, Yellow Springs and Greene County Historical Societies, Free and Accepted Masons No. 421 in Yellow Springs and an honorary member of Masters Electrical Association in Dayton.

In his younger years, Jack enjoyed reading, traveling, fishing and boating. Although he never ran for office, he was a regular vocal contributor at Village Council meetings.

He was preceded in death by his parents and a cousin, Leah Wolford Menn of Yellow Springs.

Survivors include his wife of 41 years, Marilynn Beatty Birch; cousins, Jane and Robert Wolford Adams of Columbus, Charlotte and Evan Stanley Alderfer of Island Heights, N.J., William Stanley of California, Barbara and Barry Stanley Harrison of Loveland, Dorothy Cottrell Caswell of Oneota, N.Y., Diane Cottrell of Troy, Mich., and Richard Cottrell of Houston; and nieces and nephews, Carol and Phillip Gaiser of Miamisburg, Stephen Flomerfelt of Virginia Beach, Va., Susan and Kevin Davis of Newark and Lori Fawley of Xenia.

Services were held Tuesday, Sept. 27, at the Jackson Lytle Williams Maley Funeral Home, with interment following at Glen Forest Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Alzheimer’s Association, 3797 Summit Glen Drive, Dayton; Hospice of Dayton, 324 Wilmington Avenue, Dayton; or Friends Care Community, 150 East Herman Street, Yellow Springs.

Leland Clark

Leland C. Clark, an Antioch College alumnus who began a distinguished career in science at the Fels Research Institute, died Sunday, Sept. 25. He was 86.

After graduating from Antioch with a degree in chemistry in 1941, he received a doctorate in biochemistry and physiology from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, N.Y., in 1944. He also taught at Antioch before moving on to numerous other universities or foundations. He held approximately 25 U.S. patents and numerous foreign equivalents. He completed more than 60 inventions, including the first successful heart lung machine in 1949.

A gathering for family and friends will be held Saturday, Oct. 1, 2–4 p.m., at the Jon Deitloff Funeral Centre, in Spring Grove Cemetery, 4389 Spring Grove Avenue in Cincinnati.

A more complete obituary will be published in the next few weeks.