Anna Hess McLean - Obituary

nna H. McLean died peacefully at home in Oxon Hill, MD, on October 21. She was born Anna Jane Hess in Philadelphia, PA, on Oct 4, 1927. Her father Frederick Grant Hess worked as a chemist in the petroleum industry, and her mother Mabel Berg Hess was a teacher. She has one younger sister, Mary Ellen Meyn, who survives. They lived in New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia except for a couple years during the Depression, when they moved to the Berg family farm in Indian Head, PA. The Hesses also retired there. During WWII, Anna worked in a factory, crimping and soldering, but didn’t know what she was making as it was a military secret. She got a BS in Chemistry in 1948 from Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College). She went to college on a football scholarship, which they gave to her because all the men were away in the war, and she played on their tennis team. After graduation she moved to Washington, DC, for a job at the Bureau of Standards. She attended the Mount Vernon Place Methodist Church, where she met her husband Edgar Alexander McLean when they were cast in a play together. They married on Dec 29, 1951 and moved to Forest Heights, followed by Oxon Hill, MD, where they raised 5 children: Susan Kay McLean (John Finamore), a retired English professor who taught at Southwest Minnesota State University; Sandra Marie (Frank) Jablonski, a retired lawyer who worked in the Navy JAG corps, the National Archives and the Dept of Education; William Alexander McLean, a retired music teacher, who worked in West Virginia and Florida; Frederick Miller McLean (Laura Patton), a radiologist in Knoxville, TN, and Mary Anne McLean (Darren Newman), a research physicist at the University of Cambridge in England. Anna has 3 grandchildren: Alexander McLean (Megan Butler), Emily McLean (Tyler Crown), and Derek Jablonski. Anna was a Ruby Life Master at bridge and directed a weekly game in Camp Springs, MD, for many years. She was also keen on gardening, baking, playing piano, and playing and watching sports. She was on the board of the Oxon Hill Recreation Club and the River Ridge Recreation Council and led a local Girl Scout troop. She was a kind and generous person and will be much missed.