Amherst, Mary Alma Scarcliff (Mary Boudreau), formerly of 700 Franklin Street, Belchertown, MA, died on March 26, 2016 at Hospice of the Fisher Home in Amherst of complications from ALS.  She was the daughter of the late William Frederick and Mildred (Kersh) Scarcliff of Jackson, Mississippi. Mary was born at Baptist Hospital in Jackson in February of 1937. But it was coming to Amherst Massachusetts in 1957 that she first felt at home. But Massachusetts wasn’t her first love. 

In September of 1953, Mary, then 16, spied a handsome new teacher on the first day of school in her Junior year. Stopping to find out his name and what he taught, she proceeded to the guidance counselor’s office and asked to be moved into Mr. Boudreau’s sixth period English class. “Why, Mary Alma?” was the obvious question. “Because I’m going to marry that man!” was Mary’s response. Perhaps more surprising was the counselor’s reply: “More power to ya.” And schedules forever more were changed. 

Mary relished telling the stories of how she “stalked” that teacher. What few listeners could imagine was how she also managed to get accepted – having only finished her third year of high school – to the University of Wisconsin, Madison so that she could be in college where Hal was moving on to graduate school. That sheer, relentless determination was one of her defining characteristics.

Exceptionally bright and equally diligent, Mary earned her Bachelor’s degree along with two Master’s and her Ph.D. — but never a high school diploma.  More importantly, in 1955 she did marry that man.

Hal took a faculty position at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where they moved in 1957. In the 1960s Mary taught Spanish at the Mary A. Burnham School for Girls, and later at Smith College.  

Mary’s determination also came to bear in her desire to have a child. Following a string of difficult pregnancies that would have deterred most, Hal and Mary welcomed their only child, Timothy Douglas Boudreau, in 1968. The counseling she received during that time piqued her interest in clinical psychology, and in the 1970s she returned to school at UMass to get her Ph.D. in psychology.  In addition to her academic and professional pursuits, Mary was a skilled painter, poet, house designer (blueprints and all), founder of a local Montessori school, and even a passable carpenter.

Following an amicable divorce in 1980, she built a career practicing and teaching psychology, first at Baystate in Springfield, followed by the Devereaux Institute in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 1985 she took a job teaching and developing the adolescent treatment program at UMass Medical School in Worcester, MA, where she would spend the remainder of her career, retiring in 2001.

In 2002, she bought a house in Belchertown, MA to be nearer to Hal and to Amherst, and spent her time on friends, family, reading a novel a day, and socializing a feral cat that she rescued and was resolved to domesticate. In 2015 she moved into assisted living at The Arbors at Amherst.

She died surrounded by family and friends, who read her the letters she wrote to Hal that summer of 1954 before they wed. She is survived by her former husband, Harold L. Boudreau, of Belchertown, MA; son Timothy D. Boudreau of Shutesbury, MA, his wife Christy, and grandson Jack Finnegan Boudreau, born last summer, whom she delighted in during her final months; her oldest friend Carol Broun Wansong of Washington, D.C.; her eldest friend Marilyn Greenfield of Medfield, MA; and closest friends Lisa McCune LeDuc and Steven McDonald of Belchertown, MA and Kurt Barbuscio of South Kingston, RI.