A tribute to Mary Coombs by Frank Land
Transcribed by Hilary Caminer from the recording of the LEO Computers Society zoom on 25/3/2022. This zoom session was held in Mary’s honour.
‘I want to say a few words about Mary who died so recently and tragically. I knew Mary as a personal friend and much of my recollection is of her as a personal friend. I remember we met first at the Appreciation Course which Lyons gave to their own people to see how many of them might fit into the LEO team. At the time Lyons thought they could recruit most of the people they needed for their LEO team from inside and some of the first generation like the Hemy’s and so on had all come from Lyons.
On that course I first met Mary. I didn’t recognise her as anything special but she did exceptionally well on the course on her own. She had studied French, but she was a good mathematician and she liked mathematics and indeed one of her obituaries called her a mathematician though she never studied mathematics. We were both on the same course.
I survived the course because I had a wife who was a mathematician and helped me – I don’t know where I would be now if she hadn’t helped me! Mary managed it on her own and we two were chosen to join the LEO team.
She made an immediate impression, she was thorough, she was good – and we became friends. What I remember most about her was that she was kind. I remember she was always out to help the disadvantaged.
I remember our eldest daughter was the same age as her daughter, the daughter who later died – and I remember sitting on the lawn at High Wycombe with the two girls playing together. Then, on another occasion, they were playing and their daughter hadn’t progressed and ours had and we knew then that something was wrong.
Anyway, Mary was clearly a very thorough and good programmer. She always thought that she was kept at the supervisor level rather that at management level because she was too good at her job. But I think it was more because of the glass ceiling which affected most women.
What is perhaps ironic is that Mary, through her death achieved more for the LEO story than she ever did in her life, notable as it was that she was the first woman to write a commercial program. But that wasn’t her strength – her strength was her reliability, that she was good at her job, that she was able to deal with other people. The irony is now is that through her death, through the very many obituaries she has received she has raised the status of LEO and made the LEO story better known throughout the world in a way that would have been difficult without that happening. Ironic, but true.
I remember Mary as a kind person, even when she had problems with her own child, a little bit later on she would look after somebody with MS because she felt for them and throughout her life she had this particular kindness. Some people may have called her ‘scary Mary’ or ‘bloody Mary’ but these were just nicknames people used. I think we each had our moniker – I don’t know what I was called, but I am sure it wasn’t flattering.
So let me close by paying tribute to a person who was really a wonderful person for her ability, for her continued striving for what is right and good. She is a great loss to the Society and she is a great loss to humanity.
Let me close on that note as a tribute to Mary Coombs, née Blood as was. Thank you.’