Mary Barno

Mary Louise Barno, 96, passed away peacefully in Carlisle, PA on Saturday, August 9, 2025.

Born in Little Meadows, PA, Mary was the youngest daughter of the late Joseph and Margaret (Fitzgerald) Murphy and the wife of the late William F. Barno, who passed away in 2009. They were happily married for 57 years.

Mary is survived by five children, David (Susan) of Carlisle; Mark (Allison) of New Cumberland; Brian (Carol) of Camp Hill; Karen of Boiling Springs; and Terry (Marybeth) of Virginia Beach, VA. She was also blessed with 11 grandchildren (Michael, Robert, Meaghan, Gaelan, Katherine, Eileen, Erin, Emily, Courtney, Bailey and Colleen), and four great-grandchildren (Grayson, Spencer, Simon and Theodore).

Mary met and married Bill in 1952, and the couple lived for nearly four decades in Endicott, NY where they raised a large and loving family, and were active members of Christ the King Roman Catholic Church. Mary dedicated her adult life to raising five children and taking care of their home and family. Thankfully, she was surrounded by an extended family including her parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and scores of cousins, all of whom lived within a short drive, and they spent many holidays and special occasions together. Upon Bill’s retirement from IBM, they built a new home on land they owned near Mary’s birthplace in nearby Little Meadows. For the next thirty years, they both delighted in being outside and living amidst the fields and forests close to where she grew up. Visits by their children and especially grandchildren were a highlight of their lives, and all of their many grandkids have fond memories of fishing, swimming and playing at their grandparent’s place “out in the country.”

After Bill’s death, Mary moved to Carlisle where she lived for over a decade at Church of God Retirement Home. With four of her children living nearby, she was blessed to spend holidays and birthdays surrounded by family, enjoying frequent trips out for ice cream, dinners and drives through the spectacular fall colors of the area. Mary continued to love playing rummy with visiting family, watching baseball games on TV, and savoring hot coffee and chocolate-sprinkled donuts from Dunkin until just days before her passing.

Mary’s almost ten decades of life spanned an astonishing breadth of history, both personal and worldly. She grew up on a rural dairy farm, which in her youth lacked electricity and straddled an unpaved dirt road. She attended a one-room school house through the eighth grade, which was a mile’s walk away, before going on to high school. Her childhood life on the farm began with horse-drawn hay wagons and kerosene lamps at home and as she grew older, saw the arrival of electricity, farm tractors and hay-baling machines. In adulthood, she witnessed the beginning of everyday international air travel, landings on the moon and, and in her final years, the advent of internet and mobile phones, things that were only in the realm of science fiction when she was growing up. Mary lived a full life filled with love and family spanning a remarkable breadth of time, a blessed lifetime that all of us she raised can only aspire to imitate.

A funeral mass celebrating Mary’s life will be held at 1 pm on Saturday, August 23 at St Brigid’s Church in Friendsville, PA. Relatives and friends are invited to greet the family at 12:30 pm at the church. Internment of ashes with her late husband Bill will immediately follow at St. Francis cemetery across the street, with a reception afterwards. Memorial donations in lieu of flowers may be made to: National Multiple Sclerosis Society-Pennsylvania Keystone Chapter.