In Memoriam

Mary Tabor
1949-2025

HARTWICK—On March 2, 2025, Mary Tabor climbed on her horse Rebel and rode at a full gallop to rejoin her husband, her father, and her family as she held hands with her sons.

Mary was born in the parlor of her family home on October 19, 1949 to Kenneth Kane of Christian Hill. Her earliest memories were of riding through the fields on a stone boat and picking potatoes as her diaper dragged in the dirt. She lamented throughout her life that she had to forgo the fun of kindergarten; she spent her fifth year at home helping to take care of her father, who was immobile while he recovered from breaking his back. She made him soup for lunch every day because it was all she knew how to cook. A remarkable autodidact, Mary learned how to read and write that year, and entered school ahead of her peers. She said of her childhood that, “We had next to nothing, but somehow we had everything.”

She was, from her first day to her last, her father’s daughter. A second-grade classmate twice the size of the others was an indiscriminate tormenter, and one particular victim was made to cry every day. Mary seized a brief moment during which the teacher left the room and pushed the bully into a garbage can. When the teacher asked the class who did it, Mary took responsibility. She was rewarded with having her knuckles beaten with a ruler. The bullying stopped, and after her father went in the next day, the teacher never hit another child.

Mary’s childhood on a lively Christian Hill was bursting with horses, music, stories, friends, 4-H and mothering a constant cast of children dropped off at the house when a family’s reduced circumstances forced them to turn to help from the Kane farm. Late in her life, she was shopping at Walmart when a man stopped her to ask if she was Mary Tabor. When she said yes, he explained that he had been one of those children. He told her that she’d saved his life.

While a teen, Mary’s sister Hilda’s hopelessly troubled car broke down in Hartwick. A gentleman one day removed from his release from the Navy offered to help; Ken Tabor drove them home, fell in love with Mary, and they were married for the last 55 years of his life.

Together they struck out west to the Binghamton area, where Ken worked for IBM and Mary attended the Imperial School of Beauty Culture in Endicott. Her talent as a hairdresser was only eclipsed by her ability to put her clients at ease. She continued working as a beautician after moving back to Hartwick while she and Ken built their own family home on Christian Hill. They did not employ contractors; Mary, Ken, and their families provided both the skills and the labor.

As Mary brought up her own children, she began working at Cooperstown Central School as a volunteer, where she compiled an indefatigable community curriculum vitae: she was five minutes early for every Little People’s Theater rehearsal; her cowbell was the loudest at every football game through the 1980s; and under her guidance, Cooperstown’s annual yearbook was error-free, on time, and under budget. Each year she made sure that every student who wanted a yearbook got one, even if they couldn’t afford it.

Mary worked at Cooperstown with athletic directors Ted Kantorowski and Mike Cring. In her retirement, she joined Laurens Central School in special education with Sandy Kaster and a host of friends whom she talked about daily. At both schools, her job titles were nearly nominal; her real work was providing overlooked students with the education that their schools, and occasionally parents, either couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Despite a full-time work schedule and devoting even more time to raising three boys, Mary earned a degree from Herkimer by taking classes at night. No winter storm would make her miss a class; through those years she periodically assisted the DEC with whitetail population control as she propped up local body shops. It paid off, as on countless occasions a conversation would reveal that someone just assumed she was a professor with a PhD. When she wasn’t serving as an oracle, she was reading. Her mind was at home both in the pages of the Western canon and within the stories of Jeffrey Archer and John Grisham.

Mary was a meticulous quilter who eschewed modern computerized machines for a traditional Singer Featherweight, and she became a staple at area auctions as she curated antiques and silver. Whether bullion or numismatic coins, Mary became a bellwether for other auction-goers, particularly with Morgan silver dollars. If she didn’t bid, it wasn’t worth having, and when she stopped bidding, the price was too high.

Her favorite memories included riding horses in Montana and traversing Las Vegas with her family, sipping limoncello on the Thames with her granddaughter, and poring over recipes in the Fannie Farmer cookbook with her grandson. She lived for every family holiday, which included the Kentucky Derby, as she provided all of them with an unshakeable, impenetrable stability that persists in perpetuity.

Mary continues to live on Christian Hill through her three boys, Jeffrey, Jason, and Matthew, all of Hartwick and Cooperstown, and her grandchildren, Allison, Jacob, Peyton, and Lucas.

The Tabor family will receive friends from 4-6 p.m. on Saturday, March 29, 2025, at the Connell, Dow & Deysenroth Funeral Home, 82 Chestnut Street, Cooperstown. At the conclusion of the visitation, a funeral service will be held at 6 p.m. at the funeral home.