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Mary Lindsay, 77; Widow, Advisor of New York Mayor

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From Times Staff and Wire Reports

Mary Lindsay, 77, the widow of former New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay, for whom she was a trusted advisor, died Tuesday of cancer in Palm Beach, Fla.

Lindsay, who was known for her political acumen, vigorously campaigned for her husband, who served three terms as a congressman from New York City’s “Silk Stocking District” -- from 1959 to 1965 -- and was mayor from 1966 to 1973.

She once described their days in Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, which she elegantly redecorated, as “beginning with chaos, ending with chaos and with a slight climactic middle.”

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Born Mary Anne Harrison in Richmond, Va., in 1926, Lindsay grew up in Greenwich, Conn., and earned a psychology degree from Vassar in 1947.

She taught at the Mary C. Wheeler School in Providence, R.I., and at the Buckley School in New York before marrying her husband in 1949. He died in 2000 at 79.

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