Mt. Pleasant department store owner influenced many locally and beyond - Tribune-Review
Feb 6, 2017Between the 33 years of teaching, 70 plus years of helping run and running the store and the different organizations she belonged to … yeah, a lot of people,” Leon R. Mowry II, 44, said of his mother, co-owner with her husband of Saloom Department Store in Mt. Pleasant.Those people have been streaming in to the Galone-Caruso Funeral Home for calling hours since Tuesday.Mrs. Mowry, of Acme, died Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017, in her home.She met her husband, Leon R. Mowry, at the former Ramsay High School in Mt. Pleasant. Shortly after they married, both became teachers and taught in the same school, Southmoreland Senior High School. She taught world cultures and math from 1960-93.“Students coming to the funeral home have been saying how much she influenced them. That she taught a good work ethic, she always sent letters of recommendation, a lot of different things,” said her daughter, Renee Caruso, 51, of Acme.Mrs. Mowry, born May 13, 1938, in Mt. Pleasant to the late George and Isabelle Karfelt Saloom, was a member of the Connellsville Women's Club, the Connellsville Chapter of the Eastern Star and the Mt. Pleasant Business District Authority.“She wasn't just a sit-in-the-back sort of person. She was always up front and part of it,” Mowry said.Mrs. Mowry liked to travel, and Caruso said she was fortunate to have gone along with her mother on some trips.“She had family in Lebanon, so she went there a lot,” she said. “We went to Egypt, Syria. We rode camels, the whole thing. She even helped a family adopt a child in China.”At home, Mrs. Mowry loved to bake and cook from scratch — something her children marvel about.“Any given Sunday was like Thanksgiving,” Mowry said. “Everything was from scratch, no recipes, homemade — a handful of that, a shake or two of this. Everything was wonderful, always.”“She loved to bake,” Caruso agreed. “And she could do it from her wheelchair.”About three years ago, she said, Mrs. Mowry was injured in a car crash that left her immobilized in her left leg from the knee to the an...
