Los Alamos Educator and Activist Mary Louise Williams Dies

Mary Louise Williams, known to many as Mary Lou, died Jan. 1, 2026, in Santa Fe. She was 89. A dedicated teacher, environmental advocate and community organizer, Williams taught history, government and energy and environment at Los Alamos High School until her retirement in 1988 and continued to influence education and civic life in the region for decades afterward.

Williams grew up in Mountainair, New Mexico, the daughter of businessman Fred Hail and one-room schoolhouse teacher Mabel Hail. She attended Cotty College in Nevada, Missouri, and earned a B.A. in Education from the University of New Mexico in 1958. She later received a Master of Arts from St. John’s College in Santa Fe in 1980. Those credentials anchored a career that combined classroom instruction with civic engagement and public education projects at local, national and international levels.

In the 1970s Williams founded Students to Save the Environment, a student group that traveled to other schools and spoke at hearings on environmental issues—an early example of youth-led civic participation in the region. She also coached Mock Trial, reflecting her commitment to ensuring that young people understood the law and the courts. After retiring from teaching she worked as a consultant and editor on education projects focused on the environment, law, citizenship and civil rights and traveled internationally for some of those initiatives.

From 1995 to 2019 Williams served on the J. Robert Oppenheimer Committee, where she helped bring distinguished lecturers, including Nobel Prize winners, to Los Alamos and managed the committee’s scholarship program. She was active in efforts to clear Oppenheimer’s name and celebrated the formal exoneration achieved in 2022. Those activities broadened Los Alamos’s public lecture offerings and scholarship opportunities, reinforcing the town’s educational and civic infrastructure.

Williams and her husband Michael, who died in 2021 after more than 50 years of marriage, shared a lifelong interest in Shakespeare and travel. In her later years she lived at Sierra Vista at Vista Living Care in Santa Fe, where staff and visitors cared for her.

Friends are invited to an informal burial on Wednesday, Jan. 14, at 1:30 p.m. at Guaje Pines Cemetery, 901 Range Road, Los Alamos, NM 87544, followed by a memorial service the same day at 3:00 p.m. at Rivera Family Funeral Home, 305 Calle Salazar, Espanola, NM 87532. Donations in her memory may be made to Sierra Vista at Vista Living Care. She is survived by friends, former students, and nieces and nephews who carry forward her emphasis on the common good.