Mary Lou Vergara
Mary Lou Vergara died peacefully at hospice in Raleigh, NC, at age 79, ushered homeward by fresh flowers, prayers, loving hands, and singing. She was preceded in death by her beloved parents, Otto and Genieve Brunkow; her sisters, Dorothy Walker and June Evans; and their husbands, Captain Grant Walker and Charles Evans. Mary Lou is survived by her two daughters and their husbands, Kristina and Troy Campbell of Apex, NC, and Teresa and Niall Healy of Concord, CA. She is also survived by her four grandsons: Sullivan Campbell, Liam Campbell, Dillon Healy, and Sean Healy.
Mary Lou was born in Oak Park, Illinois on September 13, 1945. She was the youngest of three daughters. Mary Lou lived her first twenty years in Glen Ellyn, IL, outside of Chicago. During those formative years, Mary Lou was nurtured by a loving family, caring neighbors and members of the First United Methodist Church. She credited those relationships with providing a firm foundation for her future life choices.
After graduating from Glenbard West High School, Mary Lou attended the University of Illinois and graduated from Greensboro College in NC, with a BA in Sociology. Throughout her life she had a passion for working with people, exploring the depths of spirituality, and pursuing social justice for all. While Mary Lou was a student at the University of Illinois, she attended a Religious Studies I course (RS-1), at the Ecumenical Institute in Chicago. Years later she would encounter this group again in the Philippines.
The trajectory of Mary Lou’s life was greatly influenced by societal events in the 1960’s: the Civil Rights Movement, assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War. In 1968, Mary Lou married Jaime R. Vergara, Jr., a young seminarian from the Philippines, attending Perkins School of Theology at SMU in Dallas, TX. Jaime was the cousin of Lily Vergara Barcelona, who had lived with Mary Lou’s family as an exchange student in 1963.
In 1972, the couple moved to the Philippines to work for the United Methodist Church. While there, they also began working with the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA), formerly the Ecumenical Institute. For the next twelve years, their family was assigned by the UMC to work with the ICA, doing rural community development across the globe. During that time, they lived in the Philippines, the Marshall Islands, Guam, Hawaii, Canada and Chicago, IL. Their two daughters, Kristina and Teresa, were born in Manila, Philippines and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada respectively.
In 1985, Mary Lou graduated from the University of Hawaii-Manoa with a Master of Social Work degree (MSW). This marked a major transition in her life. She and her daughters moved to Chicago, where she began her thirty-year career in social work with older adults. In 1987, Mary Lou and Jaime officially divorced, but ties with the Vergara family remained intact. Throughout the remainder of her life, Mary Lou treasured the love and support of the extended Vergara family and enjoyed following the lives of her many nieces and nephews.
After nine years administering a retirement community in Evanston, IL, Mary Lou moved to Atlanta, GA where she worked for the next twenty years with Senior Services North Fulton and the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) Aging Services Division. While living in Atlanta, Mary Lou also received a Master of Divinity degree from Candler School of Theology at Emory University in 2003.
In 2016, Mary Lou retired from ARC and moved to Cary, NC. She continued her work in supporting family caregivers and grandparents raising grandchildren. She also helped develop Older Adult Ministry Programs for local congregations. She was happy to live near her daughter’s family in Apex, NC, where she enjoyed watching her grandchildren grow and develop.
Every connection she made was personal, honored and cultivated. She was our family historian and archivist. Mary Lou is remembered for her prolific holiday, birthday, anniversary, and condolence cards. By extension, she was a supreme connector of people. Mary Lou is lovingly remembered for her rolodexes, and loved connecting people to other people and resources, seemingly just in their time of need.
Mary Lou appreciated sports of all kinds, particularly football, basketball, tennis, and Olympic finals, and any sport played by a family member. She loved music, Motown and world music, Masterpiece Theater on PBS, and, later, Korean dramas. She loved storytelling, a quick wit, and laughter. She delighted in silly mishaps, mischief, and verbal meanderings. Light-hearted, compassionate, and nonjudgmental, she was approachable, inspiring, and a profound leader.
To the end, Mary Lou was driven by faith, carefully choosing congregations faithful to living the loving Word of God. Most recently, she found a home at St. Francis UMC in Cary, NC., where she actively engaged in numerous programs, and became a Stephen’s Minister in 2024. Although only with them for a short time, she felt a deep and gratifying connection with their community. She understood her life as a gift from God and as a part of an unbroken line throughout human history of those who willingly and joyfully gave their lives in service to others.
A Celebration of Life will be held at St. Francis UMC in Cary, NC. at the end of the summer 2025.