The first female town commissioner in Mt. Lebanon, a vocal proponent of women’s rights and a founding member of the League of Women Voters of Mt. Lebanon, Mary Larsen was a force to be reckoned with.

“These are women who were liberated long before there was women’s lib,” said KDKA money and politics editor Jon Delano about Mrs. Larsen and his late mother June Delano, who was a dear friend of Mrs. Larsen’s and served as the second female commissioner in Mt. Lebanon. “They had strength and character, and there was a gentleness about them that was part of that generation.”

Mrs. Larsen was not one to let the grass grow beneath her feet, said Nina Helbling, who met Mrs. Larsen when the Mt. Lebanon LWV was formed nearly 60 years ago. It has since merged with the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh.

“Mary was so full of energy and ideas, and she worked so hard at any cause or issue that she was interested in,” said Ms. Helbling of Scott. “She wasn’t someone to sit around and complain. She did something about it — she would get an idea, she recruited people, she organized and she took action to get things done.”

Mrs. Larsen, 97, of Mt. Lebanon died March 9 of complications from a recent fall.

She grew up in Edmonton, in Canada’s Alberta province, and attended a boarding school on Vancouver Island as an 11 year old, when her parents divorced.

In 1939, Mrs. Larsen’s father took her on a trip to Europe with him just as World War II was breaking out.

It wasn’t the idyllic holiday she imagined as a 17 year old, but it was an adventure that sparked her mother’s lifelong passion for travel, said her daughter Anne Noland of Mt. Lebanon.

“Her father was a professor of animal husbandry at the University of Edmonton and he took a sabbatical to attend some conferences in Europe,” Mrs. Noland said. “They were putting up barbed wire in Great Britain and called for a blackout at the start of the trip. They had to leave very abruptly the next day and they just moved through Europe as best they could.”

Mrs. Larsen earned a degree in French from the University of Alberta and moved to San Francisco, where her mother lived and where Mrs. Larsen worked as an officer in a title company.

She met her late husband Harold Larsen on a train when he was a young soldier home on leave during World War II.

“He was in the service and someone was trying to get a bridge game together on the train and that’s how they met,” her daughter said. “I think they connected over the fact that their birthdays were on the same day.”

The young family moved to Mt. Lebanon in 1958 after Mrs. Larsen’s stepfather relocated his business from San Francisco to Pittsburgh and offered Mr. Larsen a job.

Her mother wasted little time in making her mark on local politics, Mrs. Noland said.

“She got very involved with the League of Women Voters at its inception, as soon as we moved to Pittsburgh,” she said. “She was very involved always and remained very active throughout her life.”

A Republican who switched her party affiliation to Democrat later in life, Mrs. Larsen was elected to a seat on the town commission in 1977 and served two four-year terms. She didn’t seek re-election after her second term.

She decided to run after spending years attending meetings as a member of the municipality’s recreation committee and as president of the Mt. Lebanon LWV, Mrs. Larsen told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1983.

“Listening to so many meetings, I got hooked on it,” she said in a the story.

Mrs. Larsen never felt disrespected by her male colleagues, said her daughter, who recalled the time her mother rode shotgun in a snow plow during a public works strike.

“She said, ‘If the guys are going to do it, so am I,’” her daughter said. “She was able to stand toe-to-toe with her male counterparts. She was undaunted.”

Mrs. Larsen was succeeded in her Second Ward seat by Mrs. Delano, also a co-founder of the local LWV.

“Both of them had the same belief, which is that government runs best when it’s run by women,” said Mr. Delano, who met a future British prime minister through his connection with Mrs. Larsen.

A longtime member of the Pittsburgh Council for International Visitors, Mrs. Larsen often hosted foreign visitors. Her most auspicious guest was Gordon Brown, who visited in the mid-1980s and went on to become U.K. prime minister from 2007 to 2010.

“Mary was super involved with the council and she called me and told me a young member of Parliament from Great Britain was coming here and she invited me to come meet him,” Mr. Delano remembered. “Of course, there was no way for her to know who this young man would become. It was just the extension of old-fashioned Pittsburgh hospitality.”

Mrs. Larsen was later welcomed during a visit to 10 Downing St., one of many globe-trotting excursions she experienced in her lifetime.

As members of Elderhostel — an international travel program for people over 55 — Mrs. Larsen and her husband traveled the world. She later became a coordinator with the program.

“She and my dad traveled extensively,” Mrs. Noland said.

Mrs. Larsen’s passionate devotion to a cause was apparent through the many letters to the editor that she wrote to the PG, and other efforts she undertook to decrease the size of the state Legislature — still the largest full-time and second highest-paid legislature in the country.

“She had this 1999 Ford Taurus and she was so proud of her bumper stickers that she had made that said, ‘Reduce the size of the legislature,’” her daughter said, laughing.

A devout Christian Scientist, Mrs. Larsen’s secret to longevity was keeping fit and she could often be seen walking throughout Mt. Lebanon and even playing soccer with her great grandson just last summer, her daughter said.

“She had a young spirit and she embraced every opportunity in life,” she said.

Along with her daughter, Mrs. Larsen is survived by three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her husband and her son Peter.

A celebration of life is being planned for a later date.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations are suggested to: Chautauqua Institution, PO Box 28, Chautauqua, N.Y. 14722-9981, the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh, 436 Seventh Ave., Suite 350, Pittsburgh 15219, or the Mother Church of Christian Science, PO Box 239103, Boston, Mass. 02123-9103.

Janice Crompton: jcrompton@post-gazette.com.

First Published: March 18, 2020, 5:07 a.m.