Meet Mary Becker

In her Lunham Avenue home, Mary Becker plays and sings "Kashmiri Song," written by Amy Woodforde-Finden in 1903. Becker, 90, has played the piano and sung regularly at the Kelly Senior Center since 1986. ~photo Michael Timm

“She holds the pulse of this community in her heart.”

Longtime Cudahy resident Mary Becker has written about life in Milwaukee’s southern suburbs since 1966. A community journalist for the Cudahy/St. Francis Reminder Enterprise, Becker covered the Cudahy and St. Francis school boards, council meetings, and even municipal court. Later, she developed two feature columns for the paper, What’s the Good Word? and City Sidelights.

Originally her beat was St. Francis, but her editor needed her more in Cudahy, which initially proved traumatic. “I came home and tears are streaming down my-[my husband] Christ said for sure somebody must have died-I said, ‘No. I’ve been transferred. I’ve got to work in Cudahy now!’ I had nothing against Cudahy, but I really liked the people in St. Francis,” Becker recalled.

One of her favorite stories to cover involved the organization of the Cudahy Historical Society. In 1971, the city of Cudahy condemned the railroad depot just southwest of Kinnickinnic and Layton avenues and it was set to be torn down. “These women had the courage to go to the common council and say, ‘You can’t do that,’” Becker said. “They got petitions out. They got people signing. They involved the railroad itself.” The depot was saved and the historical society organized in 1972. It took possession in 1978. 

Becker later joined three historical societies-Cudahy, St. Francis, and Bay View. “To tell you the honest truth,” she said, “I did it because it was a way of gathering news, making contacts.”

Her connections also resulted in more writing work. She wrote a history of the Patrick Cudahy meatpacking plant. She also developed a self-guided historical walking tour of Cudahy, included in Generations of Pride, the city’s centennial history.

Becker said in high school (she’s Cudahy High School Class of 1935) she wanted to be a tapestry designer, but she caught the journalism bug when an upperclassman interviewed her for the school paper. “It was mimeographed,” she recalled. “And seeing my name in print-that was the magic thing. I kind of fell in love with it.” She also fell in love with the high school editor, but “it didn’t amount to anything as far as he was concerned.”

Becker attended the UW Extension in Milwaukee before going to UW-Madison to study journalism. She got to be news editor of the Cardinal. “And the news editor is responsible for everything that goes in the paper on that particular day. I used to hang around till that paper actually came off the press. That was such a thrill for me, still is…” she said. “I had an idea I could marry this very nice young man and he’d be the editor and I’d be the help. Never thought that a woman could take that on.”

Then Mary Partridge, she graduated with a degree in journalism in 1939 and married Christian Becker in August of the same year. The pair had met at a church potluck in 1935. Christ Becker owned the Cudahy Fuel Company. The Beckers raised four children, two boys and two girls, and today Mary Becker counts six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Christ died in 2006.

For 18 years she was active as a Girl Scout leader and counts herself a lifelong Democrat. Becker also was chair of Cudahy’s committee for fair housing, which pushed in the 1960s to eliminate housing discrimination.

She grew up in Cudahy. Her father was a doctor. In 1924, he moved her family from Shorewood to Cudahy. Mary was 5. In Cudahy, Dr. Carroll “Paddy” Partridge practiced with Dr. Arthur C. Sidler, former and first Cudahy mayor, before remodeling his Layton Avenue home into Cudahy Hospital, according to Generations of Pride. The Partridges ran the hospital for over 25 years.

“I was just a typical Cudahy kid,” Becker recalled. “My father and mother didn’t have time to entertain us. They had the hospital to run. It was the only emergency hospital in Cudahy. The police would bring in their ambulance cases, so we had a lot of excitement. My sister and I didn’t want anything to do with the medical profession.”

They lived three blocks from Sheridan Park. “We just ran down there and played on the swings, climbed over the rocks in the lake, played tennis.” She also remembers attending Saturday afternoon serials at the old Majestic Theatre, then at 4768 S. Packard Ave. There was an organist who accompanied the silent films. “And we used to get there early so we could sit right near the organ pit and watch ‘the organ lady,’ as we called her. They even had vaudeville there on Friday nights.”

She took piano lessons and said music has been very important to her life. For 50 years, she accompanied music students in Cudahy and South Milwaukee during recitals.

These days, Becker enjoys playing bridge and playing piano at the Kelly Senior Center. She likes reading novels by J.P. Marquand and John Updike, and was reading a paperback by Kirk Douglas in September. She no longer has a column, but Becker’s still writing. Her next project is an article on the American Field Service, the foreign exchange student program.

To celebrate her 90th birthday and commemorate her service to the community, the city of Cudahy named Jan. 28, 2009 “Mary Becker Day.”

“Mary Becker is a wonderful journalist and historian who has graced us with her stories and knowledge of Cudahy,” said Cudahy Mayor Ryan McCue. “She holds the pulse of this community in her heart.”

If you know a longtime area resident whose life and stories our readers would find interesting, contact the Compass: (414) 489-0880, editor@bayviewcompass.com, P.O. Box 070645 Milwaukee, WI  53207.