Maria Teresa Eneim O’Leary, 85, an Alexandria businesswoman, mother of five children and widow of Jeremiah O’Leary, a White House correspondent for two Washington newspapers, died at her home in Alexandria on October 13.
For two decades Mrs. O’Leary operated Nuevo Mundo with Cornelia Noland in Alexandria, a shop for women’s fashions and art objects they collected on their travels through Latin America and Asia. She served a term on the board of the National Textile Museum.
Mrs. O’Leary was born in Los Angeles to Adelina Felix and Arturo Guadalupe Eneim. As a young woman she was a stewardess for Pan American World Airways, often flying troops into Japan and Korea during the Korean War. She met her husband, a Marine, during a visit to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. Mr. O’Leary later was the White House correspondent, and then a columnist, for The Washington Times. Before that he was the White House correspondent for the Washington Evening Star. He died in 1993.
She was regarded as a great beauty in earlier years, modeling swimsuits and formal wear aboard Pan Am flights. She also worked as an officer at the Pan American Union, later the Organization of American States. She filled the O’Leary home, and an adjoining tiny 200-year-old town house that had once been a shop where George Washington took his wigs to be powdered, with museum-quality art, textiles, antiques and artifacts. The house had once been a dentist’s office as well, and according to local lore the first president may have had his famously bad teeth extracted there.
Mrs. O’Leary is survived by two sons, Timothy O’Leary of Manila, the Philippines; Brendan O’Leary of Alexandria; three daughters, Dierdre O’Leary Stamper and Caitlan O’Leary Gage of Alexandria, and Moira O’Leary of Austin, Texas; a brother, Richard Eneim of Scottsdale, Arizona; and a sister, Norma Gants of Alexandria, and 10 grandchildren. Her brother, Arthur Eneim of Goleta, California, predeceased her.
A funeral mass will be held at 10:30 Wednesday morning at St. Mary Roman Catholic Church at 310 South Royal St. in Alexandria.
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