Mary Josephine Rice Adler, Artist And Museum Docent, 84

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Mary Josephine Rice Adler, an artist and longtime docent for the
Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and the National Museum of
American History, died October 15, 2006, of cardiac arrhythmia at her
home in Falls Church, Virginia, at the age of 84.

Mrs. Alder lived in McLean, Virginia, from 1953 until 2005 in a
modern-design house featured in the April 25, 1954, Washington Post and
Times Herald. A homemaker and artist, she turned part of her living
room over to a potter's wheel and studio, launching a lifelong passion
for art and art history.

She studied with local potters, including Vally Possony, and took art
classes at local colleges, including printmaking at the Corcoran School
of Art. In 1989, she received an associate degree in art from Northern
Virginia Community College.

To show their four children how people in other parts of the world
live, Mrs. Adler and her husband moved the family to Rawalpindi,
Pakistan, from 1967 to 1969. While there, the family traveled
extensively through Asia and Africa.

She was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and during World War II served
for three years with the Women's Army Corps in Belgium and Germany. She
entered the Army with her twin brother, Thomas E. Rice.

After the war, she returned to her family's home in Roslindale,
Massachusetts, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951. A
newspaper clip from her college days starts out, "Old-timers in the
Harvard community swallowed hard today when still another barrier
between men and women disappeared. Mary J. Rice, a Radcliffe Junior,
has been elected chairman of -- of all things -- the University Chapter
of the American Veterans Committee."

Before and on a part-time basis after the war, she worked as a
bookkeeper, stenographer and secretary for the Boston [Massachusetts]
Consolidated Gas Co.

When she lived in McLean, she was active in the League of Women Voters.
She gave tours at the Hirshhorn from the mid-1970s until the early
1990s and at the American History museum from 1974 to 1982.

Her husband of 54 years, Hans Arnold Adler, died in 2005. A son,
Michael J. Adler, died in 1996.

Survivors include three children, Joan Adler of Greenfield,
Massachusetts, Kenneth J. Adler of Falls Church, Virginia, and Tina
Adler of Cabin John, Maryland; one brother; and five grandchildren.

Washington Post

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