MaryFran Potts

Mary Fran Potts moved to Heaven peacefully in her sleep late Saturday night. She is survived by four children (Michael Potts, Erin Laude-Durham, Danielle Hanson, and Matthew Potts), their spouses (Martina Potts, Rob Durham, Craig Hanson, and Natalia Potts) and eight grandchildren Hannah Potts, Patrick Potts, Killian Potts, Naomi Potts, Calvin Laude, Kayla Laude, Paul Hanson, and Gabriella Potts. Mary Fran was preceded in death by her parents James and Bernadette Britt, husband Herbert Michael (Mike) Potts, sister Margaret (Peggy) Marsden, brother James (Jimmy) Britt and son-in-law Bryan Laude.

Her legacy as a dedicated special educator and woman of faith lives on in the children and grandchildren she instilled with her system of values, particularly compassion, but also the ability to love and forgive, a sense of humility and a determination to make the world a better place.

She was born in Fort Wayne, IN, in 1942, the second daughter of James and Bernadette Britt. She had an older sister named Peggy (Margaret) and a little brother named Jimmy (James). Jimmy lost his hearing as an infant and this would compel Mary Fran to learn sign language and eventually choose a career in special education after high school. Her high school years were spent with a close knit group of friends and as a majorette in the band. She loved twirling the baton and shared this love with friends and family, performing her baton twirling skills for many years.

The first in her family to attend college, Mary Fran graduated from Illinois State University with a B.S. in Deaf Education and began teaching at an elementary school in Northbrook, IL.

Mary Fran and Mike met in her first year of teaching when a reporter from the Naval Academy came to do a story about the school. Mike asked all the right questions and they soon began dating. Three months later, they were engaged, and about a year later, married, July 31, 1965.

They started their life together in West Chicago, where they lived for the next 39 years. Mary Fran took a break from teaching to raise her family, providing her children with an environment in which they could thrive and realize their potential. Most importantly she taught them how to give and receive love.

She eventually returned to being a teacher of the deaf, but also taught part-time as an English as a second language (ESL) teacher for many years at College of Dupage. In 1985, she completed her Master’s in Special Education while raising her children and working full-time with much needed help from family and close friends. Maureen Darling and her family will forever be appreciated for their close friendship, love and assistance during this time and throughout her life.

In her second stint as a school teacher, she took on the challenges of teaching children with the most severe disabilities, including autism, hearing loss, and Down syndrome. Though they were not her own children, she loved them and invested herself in their success. After 18 years of teaching in this capacity, she retired and convinced Mike to sell the family house in West Chicago and move to Wisconsin.

Retired bliss was short-lived as Mike passed away in 2005 after losing his battle with pancreatic cancer. She never remarried. It took nineteen years for them to be reunited and we can now rejoice as they are finally together again.

Over the years Mary Fran opened her home and heart to those in need. She instilled a sense of duty to serve and help those less fortunate. When Mary Fran was teaching at College of DuPage and learned that one and then another of her Cambodian students had nowhere to stay, she offered them a room in the basement of the family home. She and her husband hosted countless family members and foreign exchange students over the years, not to mention opening the home on various occasions to friends of their children who needed temporary shelter. Mary Fran was always ‘taking in strays’ in Mike’s words, but of course, this was meant in jest, as they stood together in their commitment to care for the poor and feed the hungry.

Mary Fran was a woman of strong faith and an active member of her church community, St. Mary’s in West Chicago and later St. John Neumann in St. Charles, where she sang in the choir, in addition to serving as an adult mentor in youth groups and participating in various other ministries. Singing brought her joy at every stage of her life. Despite her memory losses she could still sing almost all the words to Amazing Grace and On Eagles Wings up until the last week of her life.

Mary Fran loved politics and took an active role in every campaign election cycle of her adult life until she was too old to ring any more doorbells. At the peak of her political involvement, she traveled to the 1976 Democratic National Convention as an alternate delegate from Illinois where she personally met Jimmy Carter, one of her heroes. Even after she retired from canvassing in 2016, she remained passionate about her politics, a passion which she always viewed through a practical lens: that through effective policy, the world really could be made fairer, freer and better.

Mary Fran missed teaching soon after retiring, so she signed up to tutor at the Dominican Center for Women in Milwaukee, teaching literacy to adult women. Throughout her life but more so after retirement she loved riding her bike, swimming and walking, as well as working for social justice, but most of all being a grandma. Combining her extensive elementary teaching repertoire with her experience as a mother, she flourished in this role, spoiling her grandchildren with love and spurring on their development. With children spread across two continents, she traveled to Florida, Austria, Poland, and Wisconsin, as often and for as long as she could.

Mary Fran had an extended battle with Alzheimer’s after a diagnosis in 2018. She spent her final years in Heritage Lake Country, where she went peacefully into the arms of Jesus at the age of 81.

She will be missed dearly.

If you would like to honor Mary Fran with a gift, we invite you to make a contribution to Student-Aid: Scholarships @ Gallaudet University, where her brother graduated from college in 1975.