Mary Cummings de Wet

Mary Cummings de Wet, age 55, passed away on the 28th of July, 2025. Mary was a newspaper editor for most of her life, and she wasn't about to trust the writing of her obituary to anyone else. Mary Elizabeth Cummings was born April 1, 1970, to Tim and Anne Cummings at Women's Hospital in Baton Rouge, LA. The site has since been turned into a police facility, a move for which she takes no responsibility whatsoever. She was a nerdy little kid who grew up on North Holly Street and attended St. Thomas More Catholic School and Baton Rouge Magnet High School. She was a Girl Scout and a wrangler who was afraid of horses. In the summers, she worked at Camp Marydale as a counselor called Biskitt. During her senior year in high school, she was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma. She got over it with the help of doctors at Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Fla. She attended Louisiana State University from 1988 to 1992, working at the Daily Reveille and earning a bachelor's degree in journalism. While in college, she interned for United Press International, the Dow Jones News Fund, USA Today, the Advocate and the Baton Rouge Business Report. She also attended LSU in Paris in the summer 1992 and met her future husband, Chris de Wet, while backpacking in London. After college she worked as a copy editor at the Odessa American and the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. She married Chris in Cheyenne, WY on April 27, 1996. Mary, who had been told the cancer treatment had removed any chance of pregnancy, started to get fat in March 1997 and discovered she was five months' pregnant with their son, Kale. In 2000, Mary decided she was ready for a new challenge and applied to Dow Jones & Co. She accepted a job as a copy editor for Dow Jones Newswires in Singapore and then went to the library to look up where Singapore is. Chris, Mary and Kale moved to Singapore and lived there for seven years. Daughter Mika was born there in 2001. Mary enjoyed living in Singapore. "It was the most beautiful, well-run nation on earth," she said. In 2007, Mary applied for a transfer to the U.S. through Dow Jones. Daughter Rowan was born in Princeton, N.J., that year. Mary worked for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, eventually becoming deputy global chief of the financial wire. In 2019, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her awesome team of doctors got her through that. At the time she said, "I'm not afraid of the cancer; the cancer should be afraid of me!" She enjoyed puns, her favorite being "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." She also enjoyed daydreaming, reading and designing houses on paper. She liked and loved her family. She was diagnosed with acute leukemia and cancer in July 2025. The cancer didn't beat Mary who, quoting Tim Schrandt, said that when she died, the cancer did too, "so technically it was a tie!" She is survived by her husband, Chris; her son, Kale; her daughters, Mika and Rowan; her father Timothy Cummings; her sisters Margaret Leming, Catherine Herman and Claire Delaune; and her nephews Michael and Timothy Leming and Nate and Reese Delaune. The Funeral Mass will be on Friday, August 1, 2025 9:00 AM at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church (Christ The Redeemer Parish) 98 South 2nd Ave., Manville, NJ 08835. Arrangements are under the direction of the Ketusky Funeral Home in Manville, NJ.

Tributes

Mary Cummings de Wet

April 1, 1970 - July 28, 2025