Antiques dealer, real estate broker Mary Brickell, of Plandome, dies at 98

In her 98 years, Mary Brickell, of Plandome, seemingly packed in an additional 98 years of living.

From Depression-era Appalachia she went on to receive two degrees from The Ohio State University and a master of fine arts from Columbia University, hobnobbing with abstract expressionists in 1950s New York. On Long Island she raised four children with her husband of 68 years, co-founded the Manhasset Student Aid Association, organized events for the Plandome Woman’s Club and sewed Halloween costumes for her kids — whom she drove cross-country in 1963 for the adventure.

Brickell died of natural causes at her home on Aug. 2.

“She was both Athenian and Spartan,” said her son Mark Brickell, of Manhattan. On the one hand, she would take her children to the Museum of Modern Art to see Claude Monet’s water lilies. On the other, “She would say to her sons when we left the house, ‘Come back with your shield or on it,’ like the mothers of Sparta would say to their sons going off to war.”

While her mother could be strict and judgmental, “She had very high standards, so we needed to live up to that," said her daughter Sally Brickell, of Newton, Massachusetts. "But she also instilled in us a love of art."

Her son recalled how his mother taught her children that individual actions count. “If you threw an orange peel out the car window believing it was biodegradable and compostable and she realized it had happened, she would hit the brakes, back the car up and tell you to get out and pick it up, because she did not want you to make the world any less desirable than it could be,” he said.

Born in Huntington, West Virginia, on Dec. 15, 1925, the youngest of three children of salesman John Daly and Ruth Kaufmann Daly, Mary Alyce Daly considered herself fortunate compared with her classmates during the Great Depression.

“When I was in elementary school, poverty was the children who … came to school with a lunch that seemed to consist of cold pancakes wrapped around jelly,” she recalled in 2009 for a StoryCorps interview. She was grateful she lived close enough to go home for a lunch of hot homemade soup.

Her parents were opera buffs who valued education, and after Mary graduated high school in Columbus, Ohio — where her family had moved to after the 1937 Ohio River flood that devastated Huntington and many other communities — she attended Ohio State, also in Columbus. There she earned a bachelor of fine arts degree as well as a bachelor of science degree, which certified her as a teacher, her son said.

Among the teaching assistants she studied under were future pop-art star Roy Lichtenstein and abstract expressionist painter and photographer Stanley Twardowicz, who went on to teach at Hofstra University and remained a lifelong friend.

Moving to Chicago after graduation, Mary designed window displays for Carson Pirie Scott & Co.’s flagship store, and made drawings and wrote copy for St. Charles Kitchens, the influential midcentury design company. She became reacquainted with an Ohio State friend, Henry Mitchell “Mitch” Brickell, and they married in 1951.

The couple moved to Manhattan, spending three years there while Mitch Brickell earned his doctorate at Columbia University’s Teachers College and Mary Brickell earned her M.F.A. They moved to Bayville in 1954 when Manhasset public schools hired Mitch to develop a curriculum. In 1957 they relocated to Manhasset, where Mitch became the school district’s assistant superintendent and a nationally recognized innovator in education reform. He died in 2019.

After a few years in Bloomington, Indiana, in the 1960s, the family moved to Plandome. There Brickell worked parallel careers as an antiques dealer in Port Washington and a licensed real estate broker in Manhasset.

In addition to her son Mark and daughter Sally, she is survived by her daughter Julia Brickell, of Manhattan, and son Todd Brickell, of Port Washington; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her older siblings, Jules Ross Daly and Saralyn Daly, predeceased her.

A memorial service will be held Saturday at 2 p.m. at The Congregational Church of Manhasset, where Brickell had been active and sang in the choir. She will be buried at Glenwood Cemetery in her husband's native Yazoo City, Mississippi. Donations may be made to the Manhasset Student Aid Association.