Mary Snyder's Obituary
Mary Snyder, 85, of Prairie Grove, Arkansas, died June 12, 2026, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was born Dec. 20, 1940, in Espanola, New Mexico, to George Frederick Snyder and Bernice Ann Gee Snyder. She was the second of five Snyder girls, who included Martha, Patricia, Carole and Sandra. The family lived in several places, including Taos, New Mexico, and Durango, Colorado, before relocating to a farm just outside West Fork, Arkansas. Mary liked to remember she told her dad, “No boy will ever drive all the way down this long road to take me on a date!” This proved not to be the case.
Mary adored her dad and loved working alongside him, her mother and sisters on the farm, milking cows and doing hard labor required of farming. The family spent many weekends at the state park near the farm, Devil’s Den, a tradition that continued once the girls had children of their own. The farm was also a place of fun, with softball, fishing and games in the yard. Mary graduated from West Fork High School, where she was a basketball letterman and was elected football queen.
Mary was determined to go to college and thought it was important for women to be able to support themselves throughout their lives. She did, and then some. She put herself through the University of Arkansas with babysitting jobs, waitressing at the Fayetteville bus station café, and working as a ticket seller at Ozark Theater. She was ahead of her time in believing girls benefitted from being physically active, working hard and participating in sports. She studied physical education and graduated with a teaching degree from the U of A in 1963.
She was first hired to teach P.E. and coach girls basketball at West Fork schools before taking a job at Woodland Junior High School in Fayetteville, where she taught for more than 25 years.
She taught mainly life science, occasionally earth science, and was asked to coach the gymnastics team during several of her last years teaching. Mrs. Pinkerton was an excellent educator, creating and incorporating activities and experiments that helped bring science to life. Her favorite students were seventh graders, whom she thought were still sweet and not yet too big for their britches.
She immersed herself in hobbies over the years that sometimes stemmed from classes she was required to take for her teacher certification. Her children remember the fun of Mom waking them up to watch meteor showers when she was studying astronomy and digging for minerals and fossils when she was studying geology. After a basket weaving course, she weaved beautiful baskets for family and friends. Another fun chapter was when she let her adult children have frequent volleyball parties in her back yard on Sang Avenue in Fayetteville.
While attending the U of A, she met Harold E. Pinkerton, nine years her senior. She told two stories of how they began dating. In one, Harold fixed the ice machine at the bus station frequently and hung around making small talk. In another, they met while dancing at the Rockwood Club in Fayetteville. They were married and divorced twice and had two children, Steven Harold and Jennifer Louise.
Mary was an athlete and fierce competitor. She enjoyed playing several sports recreationally as an adult, including league bowling, softball and tennis. During the 1980s, she joined a women’s tennis team based at Summerhill Racquet Club in Fayetteville that excelled at tournament play and traveled throughout the state and mid-South region competing.
Mary’s greatest joy in life was gardening. Being a teacher, she couldn't wait for classes to dismiss so she could work from sunup until night in her gardens all summer. Like her mother and sisters, she favored daylilies and bearded iris. This accelerated after she retired from teaching, when she learned to hybridize daylilies and iris to create varieties she named. She also grew huge vegetable gardens. After moving to Prairie Grove in 2002, she established Mary’s Prairie Gardens on Viney Grove Road. For a few dollars, she would dig fans of daylilies and iris for people who stopped to buy and walk through her flower beds.
She was a member of the Northwest Arkansas Daylily Society and the American Hemerocallis Society for many years and became a garden judge. She attended regional and national daylily conferences and was proud to be a host garden during a Region 13 meeting around 2012.
Mary was preceded in death by her parents, George and Bernice Snyder; sister Carole Snyder; brother-in-law Jim Winn; and former husband Harold Pinkerton.
Mary is survived by her children, Steven Pinkerton of Prairie Grove, and Jennifer Cook and her husband, Kyle, of Fayetteville; grandson Henry Pinkerton of Hot Springs; sisters Martha Winn of West Fork, Patricia Vanderslice and her husband, David, of Mount Vernon, and Sandra Capshaw and her husband, Benny, of Wyandotte, Oklahoma. She is also survived by numerous beloved nieces and nephews and their families.
A visitation will be held 5-7 p.m. Friday, June 19, 2026, at Moore's Chapel in Fayetteville. Memorial service is at 11 a.m. Saturday, June 20, at Moore’s Chapel. Mary will be buried near her parents, sister Carole and great-niece Sadi Ruth at Friendship Cemetery in West Fork.
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