A private memorial service with a Marine honor guard was held for Lieutenant Mary Conyers Bennett Drew, 96, who died 13 Jan 2009. She had considered it a great honor to be 'Once a Marine, always a Marine.' Armed with an English and history degree from Tift College, she entered the military through Officer Training School during World War II. Assigned to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, she served as an Instructor for other women in the Marines, teaching them to handle office duties. After the war, she returned to Atlanta, earned two Graduate Degrees from Georgia State University, and was an elementary school teacher for thirty years in Atlanta, Decatur and Rockdale County, including Sky Haven and Winnona Park elementary schools. She also taught music and served as pianist for the Druid Hills Baptist Church, where she was a member for more than 70 years and one of the first women to be honored as a deacon. She directed the Life Enrichment Program in Dekalb Country and was pianist and an honorary member of the Decatur Lions Club. Once retired from public schools, she traveled widely including China, Israel and Europe. She was considered an expert in the card game of bridge and instructed both young and older persons including those in retirement homes. Warm and always ready with sound advice, Mary was a master joke teller and wordsmith who loved English history and literature, and enjoyed being a surrogate mother to the younger people in her life. A single working parent in the 1950s and 1960s when that wasn't common, she taught school, earned a living, and earned graduated degrees. But it was the raising of her son, John, that she considered her greatest achievement.