Mary Jo Maly

1937 - 2015 Mary Jo (Joey) Maly died peacefully at home in Sacramento on September 5 following an 18-month fight with esophageal cancer. Joey was born in Elgin, IL on November 18, 1937, the second child of Dr. Wallace A. and Mrs. Agnes M. Fanning, and raised in nearby Barrington, where she attended St. Anne School. To help alleviate an asthmatic condition, she attended St. Joseph of Carondelet Academy in Tucson, AZ for 7th and 8th grades. She then attended Barrington High School for two years. In 1953 her family moved to Albuquerque, NM, where she attended and graduated from Highland High School. Joey attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, was a member of Pi Beta Phi Fraternity, and after a final year at the Medical School in Denver, graduated with a degree in Medical Technology. She then relocated to the San Francisco Bay area and worked at Sequoia and UCSF Hospitals. Joey married her husband of 52 years, Richard W. Maly, on June 21, 1963 in Albuquerque. They resided briefly in San Francisco, then in Burlingame for eleven years before moving to East Sacramento in 1975. Throughout her children's school years, Joey was active in parental advisory/support groups at Sacred Heart School, St. Francis High School and Jesuit High School. She was also active for many years in the local Pi Phi alumnae group and the Sacramento Assistance League. In recent years, Joey continued to enjoy bridge, dominoes and luncheons with her many long-time friends and worked extensively as a volunteer for Mercy Guild. Joey's strength and integrity, wry sense of humor, her grace and elegance - in everything from entertaining to making a friend of a stranger, her genuine inquisitiveness and fortitude to share her perspective directly, her caring consideration of others and her true devotion to family and lifelong friends will be missed by everyone she touched. She is preceded in death by her parents and her brother, James W. Fanning, DDS and is survived by her husband, daughter Elizabeth Maly Lindgren and her husband J. Stanley Lindgren of Radnor, PA, son Edward W. Maly and his wife Hilary Old of Brooklyn, NY and currently relocating on UNICEF assignment to Kigali, Rwanda, grandchildren John McDonough Lindgren (13), Anne Maly Lindgren (8), and Lansing Edward Maly (3), sister Patricia F. Farnsworth of Williamsburg, VA, four nieces, five nephews, two grandnieces, and six grandnephews. Mass of Christian Burial will be held at Sacred Heart Church, 1040 - 39th Street on Saturday, September 12 at 11:00 a.m. with burial following at East Lawn Memorial Park, 4300 Folsom Boulevard. The family expresses gratitude to Dr. Robert Quadro, Mercy Oncology, for his fine professional care, and to Mercy Hospice nurses and aids and Caregiver Adi Uluiviti for their gentle and compassionate service during Joey's final weeks. In lieu of flowers, friends may make a contribution to Sacred Heart School, Mercy Guild, or a charity of choice .