Mary Elizabeth Mooney B-A-5-2-5

Mary E. Mooney could have been in show business. At 23, she had her picture on the cover of Chicago Tribune Magazine - a story in itself - and the photographer observed that she "looked more like Elizabeth Taylor than Elizabeth Taylor did." She once wrote a song, "In the Mood to Have Fun," and performed it at Moonlite Gardens at Coney Island Park, hoping it would become a hit. (It didn't, her son says, mostly because her name wasn't "Doris Day.") And in 1980, she fast-talked her way past a Secret Service agent at an Indianapolis hotel, grabbed GOP presidential nominee Ronald Reagan by the arm and gave him a letter with her ideas for ending the Iranian hostage crisis. "Whatever the opposite of a wallflower is, that's what she was," said her son, James C. Mooney of Anderson Township. She died Thursday during hip surgery at Bethesda North Hospital. She was 83. MOONEY Mary Elizabeth (nee Welch) Beloved wife of the late William M. Mooney, devoted mother of William M. Mooney, Joanne (William) Sloneker, and James C. (Heather) Mooney. Dear sister of JoAnn McLane. Loving grandmother of five. Died October 22, 2009. Mass of Christian Burial will be on Wednesday October 28, at 10:00 AM at St. Gertrude Catholic Church in Madeira a reception will follow. Burial will be at the Mooney family plot in Edinburgh, IN. Born January 19, 1926 in New Orleans LA to John B. Welch & Frances O’Callagahan died in Montgomery, Ohio on October 22, 2009 SS# 317-24-6805 Condolences may be expressed at www.gilliganfuneralhomes.com