OBITUARIES

M. L. Faunce was born on May 27, 1944, a fifth-generation Washingtonian. She graduated from Catholic schools into government work beginning in 1962 as a secretary at NASA Headquarters Office of International Affairs. In the heyday of space flight, she had a heady life that included trips to the NASA office in Paris.

Six years later, caught up in the winds of politics, she applied for a job with a newly elected Senator from Alaska, Mike Gravel, and got the job as assistant to the Press Secretary. In her 40 year career on Capitol Hill, she worked mostly for Alaska members—with the exception of Abe Ribicoff—including Senators Frank Murkowski and Ted Stevens. As Community Constituent and Information Services Director, She traveled and lived in Alaska serving rural constituents by car, truck, boat, plane, and dogsled.

After her Alaska years,she helped in the planning and preparation of the U.S. Capitol for Bill Clinton’s second Inaugural, spent two years in the Maryland Statehouse as a legislative aide and finished her career as an administrative analyst for the U.S. China Commission.

In all that she did, M.L. embraced life with an open heart whether it was as a marathon runner or hiking and skiing with Washington Women Outdoors. The Chesapeake Bay enriched her city life as well for, “memories of crabbing and fishing and boating with my cousins were the stuff of dreams,” she wrote. She relived her dreams in the 1990s by moving to Chesapeake country where she discovered a new weekly newspaper, The New Bay Times, and “began a dozen or so years of joyful writing about all that was unique about Bay Country.” In 2021 her work was published as “My Date With an Oyster and Other Stories of a D.C. Girl Discovering Chesapeake Country,” by New Bay Books.

In 2011 M.L. moved reluctantly to Florida with her partner, Shelley Fletcher, saying “I don’t think I can live there full-time.” Four years later, after discovering the joys of Gulfport and reveling in tropical nature, she gladly became a full timer while still traveling widely.

Hers was a life well and justly lived, with compassion and conscience, until cancer took her on October 31, 2021.

She is mourned by her partner Shelley Fletcher, her niece, Janet Knotts; longtime friend Kathleen Wilson; her brother Brian Faunce, nephew John Knotts and niece Julie Shirley and their families; and friends in Alaska, Florida and the Mid-Atlantic. Services will be held at a later date.