Mary Tyler Driver Young, 94, a resident of Alexandria for over 50 years, died of pneumonia on April 11 at Capital Hospice in Arlington. She was born Sept. 20, 1913 in Milton, Mass., the youngest child of William R. and Mary (Swift) Driver. She graduated from Milton Academy, and then from the New England Conservatory of Music, where she received diplomas in orchestral music and soloist performance as a violinist. She also attended the Conservatoire Américain in Fontainebleau, France. While working as a Red Cross volunteer during World War II she met and later married Clinton J.T. Young, an engineer and inventor, and eventually settled in Alexandria.
Mary Young had a deep and sustaining love of music and was often in demand as a violinist. Over the years she played with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra as concert master and first violin, and with numerous other groups including the Friday Morning Music Club, the Virginia Chamber Orchestra, and the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic (formerly the Mount Vernon Orchestra). She also gave private lessons in violin and viola for many years, and played in the Music in Schools Program, which brought classical music to students in over forty public schools in Virginia, Washington D.C., and Maryland.
She was active in the community, working with the PTA and Rosemont Citizens Association, the Colonial Dames, Mayflower Descendants and other civic and social groups. She is survived by her three children, Dr. Clinton D. Young of Greensboro, North Carolina, Russell M. Young of Silver Spring, Maryland, and Eleanor A. King of Alexandria, Virginia, and by two grandchildren, Grant Young of Chicago and Amanda Young of Washington D.C. Her husband Clinton died in 2001.