Mary Hohenberger, a Baltimore County government administrator who was among the first women to serve in the Baltimore City Police Department, died of complications of a fall on April 8. She was a resident of Oak Crest Senior Living in Parkville and was 91.
Born in Baltimore and raised on East Biddle Street near Green Mount Cemetery, she was the daughter of Irish immigrants. Her father, Patrick Burke, from County Mayo, was a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad boilermaker. Her mother, Delia Scully Burke, from County Clare, was a housekeeper.
She attended St. John the Evangelist School and graduated from Seton High School in 1952.
“She was quite a character. Very quick-witted and funny,” said Glenn Small, a nephew and a former Baltimore Sun reporter. “She had her own way of doing things and had a big personality.”
Mrs. Hohenberger took a job in the purchasing department of the Baltimore City government, later becoming a civilian employee in the police department’s unit that monitored pawn shops.
“She saw female police officers and, when she turned 21, she applied for the force,” Small said.
After formally joining the force, she was assigned to an all-female unit at the Pine Street Station, a facility on West Lexington Street near Martin Luther King Blvd. that handled women charged with crimes.
She later transferred to the vice squad, a unit headed by Capt. Alexander Emerson, a much-feared law enforcement official known for staging raids and battering doors with a maul, often accompanied by news reporters.
Small said he took notes of her life for a family history. She told him that she sometimes posed as a prostitute in sting operations. Later, she was asked to walk through dark alleys as a police decoy. She worked an operation when there was a serial knifer newspapers referred to as the “Belair Road Slasher.”
“So, this police officer, he’s supposed to be following me, protecting me, right?” she remembered. “Well, I’m walking down this alley all by myself, thinking I have this protection, right? I turn the corner, who do I run into but the officer?”
“I said, ‘You’re supposed to be in the back of me,’” she continued. “He said, ‘Well, I didn’t know which way you went and I figured I’ll find you.’ I said, ‘I could have had my throat slashed,’” she said, laughing at the retelling.
After serving on the vice squad, she married Herbert Hohenberger, a Baltimore County attorney active in politics. He served as Baltimore County Council secretary for a decade during the administrations of Spiro T. Agnew and Dale Anderson.
Mrs. Hohenberger worked for the Baltimore County government for more than 30 years, mostly in the office of permits and licenses. She retired in the early 2000s.
“She was funny, very outgoing. She was the life of the party,” said her granddaughter, Meaghan Lilienthal.
Mrs. Hohenberger lived in Parkville and traveled extensively.
Mrs. Hohenberger donated her body to science.
Survivors include a daughter, Sherry Lilienthal of Mobile, Alabama; a sister, Kathleen Wilson of Parkville; and two granddaughters, Meaghan Lilienthal of Mobile and Lauren Arrance of Madison, Alabama; and a great-granddaughter.
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