Former Dundalk Eagle Publisher Mary Oelke Dies

Mary Georgina Oelke, longtime publisher of The Dundalk Eagle (shown at left with late husband Kimbel E. Oelke), died July 30 at Stella Maris Hospice where she had been staying since being diagnosed with cancer in late May. She was 89.

A native of Louisville, KY, Mary was born in 1921, the seventh of 11 children born to Mary Irene and Joseph F. Jarboe. She graduated from Louisville’s Presentation Academy in 1938 and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago while living in that city with her brother Claude. In her youth she worked as a telephone operator and as an artist who designed ceramics for Louisville’s John B. Taylor Pottery Company. During World War II she was employed with Louisville’s Curtiss-Wright airframe plant where she riveted nose cones and wings on C-76 Caravan cargo planes and C-46 Commando transport aircraft.

She met her husband to be, Kimbel E. Oelke, on a blind date while he was visiting relatives in Louisville after being discharged from service in the U.S. Navy. The couple married in June, 1946 and moved to Dundalk where Kimbel was employed as a reporter with The Community Press

Over the course of the next 20 years, the Oelkes had 11 children and Mary, a homemaker for most of that time, developed a fondness for and knowledge of antiques. In 1966, she and Kimbel opened Carriage House Antiques on Main Street in Ellicott City. The Oelkes operated Carriage House as a retail store and held occasional antique auctions there. They used the proceeds from the sale of the store to start The Dundalk Eagle in 1969.

Though her husband was the newspaper’s publisher and Mary’s name appeared nowhere on the early masthead, she was an integral part of the fledgling Eagle’s success. She gathered copy for weekly editions, did page layout and pasteup work on her kitchen table, helped with the paper’s subscriber labels and distribution and kept the paper ’s financial books.

As The Eagle became more well established, Mary continued her contributions to the paper’s production, sharing an office with her husband and eventually taking on the mantle of publisher after Kimbel’s death in 1998. Under her leadership, the paper acquired the monthly magazine, "What’s Happening", for which she also assumed the role of publisher

Trained as an artist, from time to time throughout her busy life she produced a number of paintings that are treasured by her family. She also was a prodigious poet whose often amusing works were occasionally published in The Eagle and elsewhere.

Mary was predeceased by her husband, by two grandchildren and by all ten of her brothers and sisters. Surviving her are her children, Kim E. Boone, Deborah I. Cornely, Elizabeth A. Conklin, Kerry A. Munafo, Barbara E., Timothy W., James A., Mary Jane, Suzanne C., Amy K. and Andrew P. Oelke. She is also survived by 15 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to one of the following: the Kimbel E. Oelke Memorial Scholarship Fund offered by the CCBC Foundation-Dundalk, 7200 Sollers Point Rd., Dundalk, MD 21222; the Kimbel E. and Mary G. Oelke Memorial Fund awarded for artistic merit by the American Academy of Equine Art, P.O. Box 1364, Georgetown, KY 40324; or to Penn-Mar Human Services, an organization that provides help for the disabled, 310 Old Freeland Rd., Freeland, MD 21053.