 ROOT, MARY ALICE (SIMS) an influential New Mexico naturalist, dies at 89 (April 26, 1923 to January 31, 2013) surrounded by family in Edina, Minnesota. A world traveler and passionate bird watcher from the age of five, Mary visited over 60 countries to observe birds. She was born and raised in Indianapolis and graduated in 1946 from Butler University with a degree in Physics and Math. In 1947, she married L. Jay Root of Indianapolis, shortly before they moved to Albuquerque. She reluctantly left her beloved New Mexico in 2009, to move to Minnesota for treatment of lymphoma and to be near her son's family. Mary was active in the Pi Beta Phi sorority and in the Panhellenic Council. She started her career in 1950's as a teaching assistant in physics at the University of New Mexico, and retired from UNM in 1988 as an administrator in the Biology Department. At UNM she often battled stereotypes against women, gaining many allies and lifelong friends who admired her grit and determination. While working, she took numerous classes in Spanish, anthropology and biology including ornithology. In 1970's, she was instrumental in starting the Albuquerque chapter of Audubon Society and was President of the New Mexico Ornithological Society (NMOS). She gave talks and led birding trips during the annual Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge annually from 1989 to 2008. She was keenly interested in fossil birds, lectured often on bird evolution and wrote several articles (e.g. Root, M. A. 1997. The Creaceous-Teriary fossil birds in New Mexico. New Mexico's Fossil Record I: New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin. Vol 11). She was highly instrumental in obtaining the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (NMMNHS) exhibit of the giant Eocene bird Diatryma (Diatrymas gastronis), first described from fossils found in 1874, in the San Juan Basin near Cuba, NM. She tracked down the fossil bones at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, raised the $10,000 it took to have scientifically precise replicas made of all the bones, which were sent to NMMNHS and assembled. The exhibit of this 6.5 feet tall bird has been displayed since 2001. After she retired, she tirelessly entered bird observation data into the NMOS Bird Siting Database, and was given the NMOS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. In her forties, she began running, winning many races in her age group well into her 60's. She also joined a Jacki Sorensen's aerobic dance class in her forties and exercised with the same class into her eighties. Weekly for over 30 years, she and a friend walked the path around the North UNM Golf Course. A public celebration of Mary's life will be Saturday, May 4, 2013, at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque at 6:30 pm. Please bring photos of Mary to exhibit the celebration. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Mary Alice Root Fund for the Museum's Junior Docent Program, NMMNHS Foundation, P. O. Box 25446, Albuquerque, NM 87125. Mary is survived by her daughter Dana, son-in-law Kris Hansen, their children Kyla and Ross, and Ross' wife Justine (Curry); her daughter Terry; her son Bryan, daughter-in-law Valerie (Leach), their children Sam, Brandon, and Justin, Sam's wife Mindy (Sell) and their children (Mary's great-grandchildren) Noah, Becca Joy, Alton, and Catherine; and her brother Daniel Sims, his wife Carol and their children Gregory and Scott, and Gregory's wife Kimberly and Scott's wife Eileen. Preceding Mary in death were her ex-husband L. Jay Root, brother Lawrence Sims, sisters Margaret Sims and Irene (Sims) Hardman, and Terry's husband Stephen H. Schneider.
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