Mary Harrington Post, Beloved
Wife, Mother and Grandmother
Mary Harrington Post died after a long illness on Friday, February 21, 2025. Mary was born in Elizabeth, N.J., to Paul and Margaret Harrington on July 6, 1943, the fifth of their six children. She graduated from Benedictine Academy in Elizabeth in 1961 and from Trinity College in Washington, DC, in 1965. She resumed her education in 1980, earning an MBA from Rutgers University in Newark in 1982, and then a JD from the Rutgers School of Law in Newark in 1985.
Whether as a wife and mother, teacher, cook, seamstress, gardener, softball coach, TV show contestant, graduate student or practicing attorney, Mary was a force of nature. She invariably left an impression on everyone she met. Her boundless energy and enthusiasm coupled with her formidable intellect and wit enabled her to excel at everything she did.
She was a certified teacher and her second-grade students at Our Lady of Lourdes in Mountainside loved her. The girls on her softball teams loved playing for her and she coached them to the Union County Championship.
Mary was the star of the show when she and her husband defeated seven other couples on the “Dream House” network television show and won a house that stands today in Mountainside.
After majoring in English at Trinity, and raising her children, at age 39 Mary enrolled in Rutgers’ highly quantitative MBA program, where she was required to take courses in Statistics and Calculus so that she could handle the Business School curriculum. She graduated in the top 10 percent of her MBA class, becoming a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society in the process.
With her MBA in hand, Mary concluded that practicing law offered a better opportunity for meaningful work than the business world. She attended Rutgers School of Law-Newark, where she was a member of the prestigious Rutgers Law Review. After receiving her JD, Mary was recruited by the state’s leading law firms and commenced a distinguished career as an advocate and litigator, with a rare talent for tax law. Except for a three-year stint for her husband’s military service, Mary was a lifelong resident of Mountainside. She worked with architects and contractors to design and build a home in Mountainside adjoining her parents’ home, where she lived for the rest of her life. She also made a home at the Shore, where her parties after the annual Dog Day Race in Harvey Cedars became legendary.
In recent years, Mary was saddened by the loss of three of her brothers, Paul, Jim and John Harrington; her sisters-in-law, Mary Isobel (“Marissa”) Post, Carol Harrington and Sally Harrington, and her brother-in- law, Jay Scott MacNeill. She is survived by her husband, John, also one of six children; two daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah; her son-in-law, Timothy Smith; her grandchildren, Margaret and Timothy Smith; her brother, Timothy Harrington; her sister, Margaret (“Peggy”) MacNeill, and dozens of nieces, nephews, their progeny, and by in-laws, all of whom she dearly loved.
Visitation will be at the Dooley Colonial Funeral Home, 556 Westfield Avenue, Westfield, N.J., on Monday, March 10, 2025, from 4 to 8 p.m. A Funeral Mass will be held on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, at 10 a.m., at the Our Lady of Lourdes Church, in Mountainside, N.J., followed by a graveside service at Fairview Cemetery in Westfield.
To honor Mary’s philanthropic disposition, the family has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Red Cross Central, 1540 West Park Avenue, Ocean, N.J. 07712.
February 27, 2025
