Mary Louise Mozier

Mary Louise Mozier, 88, of Overland Park, Kansas, passed away peacefully at home on March 12, 2026, after a brief illness. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 21, 1937, she moved with her family to Troy, Missouri, in 1940. There, her parents, Walter Julius and Clara Marie (née Price) Curt, opened a Western Auto franchise, and she grew up alongside her older brother, Walter L. Curt. She attended Sacred Heart Catholic elementary school and Buchanan High School, where she met her future husband, Johnnie Mozier, while playing alto saxophone in the school band. They married in December 1955, shortly after her high school graduation.

Mary Lou supported John through veterinary school at the University of Missouri while they lived in a mobile home in Columbia. The couple moved several times for his career, first to Goshen, Indiana, then back to Missouri, and later to Kent, Washington, where John served in the Army Veterinary Corps. Their four sons were born during these years: John Jr., Ned, David, and Matthew. In 1964 the family settled in the Leawood and Stanley, Kansas, area, where Mary Lou designed and built a home on a small farm that suited their growing family. She managed a popular strawberry farm business, later earned a B.S. in Education from the University of Kansas, and worked as a high school substitute teacher. She also cultivated her talent for interior design and antiques, restoring and selling pieces at local shops, including many happy years at her friends’ store, The Gift Tree, in Overland Park. She cherished trips with friends to antique shows and flea markets across the country and took great pride in watching her sons play varsity basketball at Blue Valley High School. An avid reader, she built a notable collection of early George Eliot volumes.

Later in life, Mary Lou and John moved to a farm near Louisburg, Kansas, where she created a beautiful English-style garden filled with flowering plants that reflected her green thumb and brought joy to all who visited. In 2022 they returned to a townhome in Overland Park, where she enjoyed quiet mornings on the porch with her beloved Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Candi, greeting neighbors and tending small garden beds. Even as memory issues arose in her final years, she continued to plant flowers each spring, brightening her neighborhood.

Mary Lou was preceded in death by her parents, her brother Walter L. Curt, and her granddaughter Emily Elise Mozier. She is survived by her husband of more than seventy years, John Owen Mozier, and their four sons and daughters-in-law: John Owen Mozier Jr. and Nancy Parsons, Ned Michael Mozier and Diane Schaper, David Mark Mozier and Jill Warnasch, and Matthew Curt Mozier and Andrea Dreiling. She is also survived by nine grandchildren—Lukas Mozier, Amelia Mozier, Caitlin Yang, Hannah Grooms, Dylan Mozier, Suzannah Mozier, Tommy Mozier, Ella Mozier, and Nina Mozier—and seven great-grandchildren: Owen and Natalie Mozier, Miyah and Presley Mozier, and Ian, Archer, and Freya Yang.