Maryvonne Anne McQuade, 75, of Bismarck, ND died of brain cancer on January 20, 2023 at Miller Pointe in Mandan, ND.
Maryvonne was born on August 29, 1947 to Auguste and Anne-Marie Jollet in Angers, France. She grew up playing along the Loire River with her three brothers in a village just outside Angers and attended university in Nantes, France where she met her future husband, Sam McQuade Jr.
According to Sam, it was a “coup de foudre” or lightning strike and love at first sight for him. For her, she would joke it took a little more convincing, but in 1968 they were married in Angers.
They moved to the United States to Littleton, Colorado where both Maryvonne and Sam were teachers. It was there that they had their first daughter, Shannon, in 1973.
In 1975, tragedy struck when Sam’s brother Gerard was killed in a car accident and Maryvonne and Sam moved back to Bismarck to take over McQuade Distributing. In 1977, they had their second daughter, Kelly.
In Bismarck, Maryvonne worked with restaurants to help them improve their recipes, taught French at Bismarck Junior College and even held French summer camps for elementary school aged children. But her best role was that of mother and later, Nana. Everyone knew Maryvonne as “Nana.” She was a favorite of many of her grandkids’ friends and would often host them for lunch in between high school classes.
Maryvonne excelled at so many things. She was everyone’s go-to when it came to so many things: shopping for clothes, decorating your house, cooking a meal with whatever was lying around, gardening, dancing, even tennis coaching. And she did this all with such a fun-loving spirit and sense of humor. She was beloved by everyone who knew her. She used to tell everyone that she was kind but not nice and that reflected her spunky attitude to life.
Maryvonne was preceded in death by her father, mother and her three brothers. Maryvonne is survived by her husband, Sam McQuade Jr, her daughters Shannon McQuade-Ely and Kelly Conley, her sons-in-law Dale Ely and James Conley and her grandchildren Samantha and Cameron Clark, Cullen and Nevin Conley, and Lexi and Ian Ely, as well as great-grandson Rory Ely who was born a few months after her death.
A memorial and celebration of life will be held for Maryvonne at Broadway Grille 100 W Broadway Ave, Bismarck on Friday, July 14 th (France’s Bastille Day which was one of her wishes) from 4-6pm where we will share fun Nana stories which is exactly what she wanted!