Mary Lindsay Elmendorf

Elmendorf died on September 15, 2017, at 100 years old

Elmendorf became affiliated with the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Applied Anthropology, the Association for the Advancement of Science, the AAUW, the United Nations Association of the US, the UNIFEM/Gulf Coast Chapter, and the Democratic Club. She volunteered with the American Friends Service Committee in 1944 - 1946. She was the head of the CARE office in Mexico (1952 - 1960) and became the first anthropologist hired by the World Bank (1975). Elmendorf was involved in various educator projects like Brown University (1962–65), Goddard College (1973), etc. Based on her work and application of anthropology, she aided at the United Nations Conferences on Women held in Mexico, Copenhagen, Nairobi, and Beijing.

Elmendorf met her first husband, John Elmendorf, as a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; they married in December 1937. John Elmendorf died in 1980 and she eventually remarried Dr. John Landgraf (1914 - 2010).

She attended St. Pauls High School in 1933 and was a valedictorian. and earned her B.A. Psychology (1937) and her M.A. equivalent in Public Administration and Social Work (1941) at UNC-Chapel Hill. She graduated from school in Anthropology (1946 - 1948) and then attended Union Graduate School in 1972 earning a Ph.D. in Anthropology.

Mary Lindsay Elmendorf (1917-2017) was an American applied anthropologist, recognized mainly for her work with the Mayan women of Mexico and her application of anthropology in consultation with technology. Her early work involved rural south and the slums of Boston and New Haven as well as in the Putney School in Vermont and Mexico. Her application of anthropology focused mainly on involving women with planning and implementation of suitable technologies for those women and others to choose and manage their development strategies.