Mary Louise Irby Gilbreath

Mary Louise Irby Gilbreath grew up in Coppell, Texas in the 1930s, when people understood what hard scrabble meant because they lived it. Nothing was assumed. Nothing was wasted. Work was not optional, and neither was responsibility. Those years shaped her. They gave her a spine that never bent and a sense of purpose she carried for the rest of her life.

After graduating from Carrollton High School, she put herself through college at North Texas State University. She earned a degree in journalism at a time when few women were encouraged to do so, and fewer still were expected to use it. She emerged educated, determined, and ready to work.

She began as a schoolteacher, standing in front of classrooms and doing what she would always do best, bringing order, clarity, and discipline to complex ideas. But journalism was her true passion, and she soon moved into professional newsrooms, where she broke ground quietly and decisively.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, she became editor of both the Irving Daily News and the Grand Prairie Daily News. These were not ceremonial titles. She made decisions. She set standards. She shaped how entire communities understood themselves at a time when women rarely held that kind of authority. She led newsrooms while also managing a household and raising two children, doing both without complaint and without asking for recognition.

She later brought her skills into public relations and city politics in Grand Prairie, and then into corporate communications at LTV and Vought, at the center of North Texas’s aerospace industry. For twenty-five years, she was trusted with a company’s public voice in a world where trust was rarely extended to women. She earned it through competence, judgment, and an unshakeable work ethic.

Even retirement did not slow her down. She continued working as a freelance corporate communications contractor, valued for the same precision and reliability that had defined her entire career. At the same time, she returned to teaching in another form, serving faithfully as a Sunday School teacher at Holly Brook Baptist Church in Holly Lake, Texas, sharing knowledge, faith, and patience with the next generation.

Mary Louise broke the glass ceiling without ever naming it. She did not announce her progress. She simply advanced, step by step, balancing ambition with family, professionalism with humility, and authority with grace.

She showed us what was possible for a woman who started in Depression-era Coppell, believed in education, worked relentlessly, and refused to accept the limits placed in front of her. She always swung for the fence. She never played small ball. The stakes were always real.

She was a devoted daughter to her parents, a beloved sister to her brother, a dear friend to many, a mentor to those who sought her counsel and a North Star for her children.

That life, fully lived, honestly earned, is what we honor today.

Those left to cherish her memory are son, Chris Gilbreath and wife Lisa, daughter, Kelli Stewart and husband Steve, brother Bob Irby, nephew Chad Irby and wife Michelle and several cousins

Mary Lousie was preceded in death by her parents, Casey and Genevieve Irby and grandson Olton Strickland.

The family will receive friends the afternoon of Friday, January 2, 2026, from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM at in the Chapel of Croley Funeral Home in Hawkins. Mary Lousie's Celebration of Life Service will follow Saturday, January 3, 2026, starting at 1:00 P.M. at the Holly Brook Baptist Church in Holly Lake with interment to follow in Rock Hill Cemetery in the Coke community.