July 31, 1940-September 18, 2024
Mary Ann Jordan passed away peacefully on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 in Santa Barbara, California, following a 5 year battle with dementia.
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on July 31, 1940, Mary Ann was the oldest of 3 daughters, raised in a house filled with midwestern practicality and high expectations.
Her father, Richard C. Jordan worked at the University of Minnesota, serving as Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department for 27 years and Dean of the Institute of Technology for 8. Her mother, Freda May (Laudon) Jordan, worked as a school psychologist. Mary Ann, her sisters Carol and Linda, and their mother, would spend summers in a rustic cabin on a remote island in the middle of Lake Kabetogama in Northern Minnesota. Here at their “Retreat from Reason”, the sisters enjoyed a life with few modern luxuries as they swam for hours, fished for their dinner, sang songs, put on skits, and read by lantern each night. Throughout Mary Ann’s life, she would recall her times at the lake with great fondness for the sense of adventure and independence it had offered the young women.
After graduating from Alexander Ramsey High School in Minneapolis in 1958, Mary Ann attended Carleton College for 2 years before transferring to the University of Minnesota to complete her degree in mathematics. She went on to the University of Rochester to earn her PhD in Cell Biology studying salamander organelles.
It was while in Rochester that she agreed to go on a blind date with fellow Minnesotan, Paul Lommen, a graduate student of Physics. After presumably discussing the merits of pickled herring and frozen pond skating, the date was declared a success and they were married shortly thereafter in 1965. Hopping around the U.S. for various post-doc assignments, they celebrated the birth of their first daughter, Andrea, in 1969, and second daughter, Kate, in 1972. The foursome settled in Santa Barbara in 1977.
Throughout her life, Mary Ann was passionate about travel, managing to visit countless places on seven continents. As a junior in High School, she bravely signed up for a year-long exchange program traveling to Belgium to live with a family and attend school. While in graduate school, Mary Ann leapt at the opportunity to spend 6 months sailing the South Pacific on the Te Vega research vessel, studying marine biology, and forging a life-long love for the ocean. Mary Ann told stories of the defining experience for years to come, encouraging her children and grandchildren to explore the unfamiliar. Years later, when she had migrated from the lakes of Minnesota to the seaside city of Santa Barbara, Mary Ann would relish “beach days” with her daughters as opportunities to explore tide pools and poke sea anemones, rather than lounge in a reclining chair.
As a scientist and adjunct professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Mary Ann was driven to excel.
She became an expert in light and electron microscopy and did seminal work on anti-cancer drugs that acted on cell division and the assembly and structural organization of microtubules. She authored and co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed research papers that were published in highly-respected scientific journals. Mary Ann was highly sought out as a research collaborator and lecturer all over the world. Later in her career, she was instrumental in a start-up company integrating Western medicine with Chinese herbal medicines in the hunt for novel anti-cancer drugs.
Mary Ann shared 25 years of marriage to David Johnson, enjoying their home in the Santa Barbara hills – watching the fog roll in over the ocean in the distance, listening to the birds, and growing avocados and oranges together. They adventured to remote places including the Yukon territory and the Seychelle Islands. Mary Ann cared deeply and advocated fiercely for Dave during his struggle with cancer and gave him great comfort before his passing in 2009.
As fortune would have it Mary Ann’s dear friend, Sia, introduced Mary Ann to her widowed brother Alan Staehle, and the two fell deeply in love and married at age 70. She spent a significant portion of her life in Ouray over the past 14 years, beginning with a June snowstorm overnight in 2010. She loved her Santa Barbara home and also loved her Ouray home with Alan and all the mountain activities. She was a supporter of such diverse parts of the Ouray community as the Ouray County Performing Arts Guild and the Ouray Mountain Rescue Group.
Mary Ann always said her daughters were one of the best things she ever did. She laughed and played and engaged with her children and grandchildren at every opportunity – never shying away from a conversation or learning experience. She took countless lessons – ballet, scuba diving, belly dancing, and painting. She grew glorious gardens, made remarkably good wine, and concocted strange meals. She loved to sing, sightread unknown pieces on the piano, and dance to her own rhythm. She was infinitely curious about all things and all people, dismissing conceit in herself and others. Not even the gift of 100 more years on this beautiful earth could have quelled that curiosity.
Mary Ann is loved and remembered by her loving husband, Alan Staehle; Andrea Lommen and Stuart VanOrmer; Kate (Lommen) Hickey and Peter Hickey; Carol (Jordan) Wawersik and Wolfgang Wawersik; Linda (Jordan) Cogdill and John Cogdill; Christina Johnson and David Clark; Bonnie (Johnson) Murphy and Steve Murphy; and Shakti (Johnson) St. Michael and Shiva St. Michael, and grandchildren Eko, Tiu, Rose, Finn, Sunny, Rose, Xyla, Adelaide, and Jameson.
Mary Ann was preceded in death by her parents Dr. Richard C. Jordan and Freda May (Laudon) Jordan, and by her late husband, David Johnson.
Please join Mary Ann’s family in celebrating her life at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, 1535 Santa Barbara St., at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Reception to follow. Donations in her honor may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, the Ouray County Performing Arts Guild, or the Ouray Mountain Rescue Group.
An online remembrance site — www.forevermissed.com/maryann-jordan/about — has been created for people to leave notes and comments.
