After a few months of Due West, she married (again!), quit music (again!), and she and her new husband - whom she met, by the way, at Mardi Gras in New Orleans - along with her two daughters and a dog named Shorty, moved to Cocoa Beach, Florida, where her husband was a commercial fisherman and she was a full time wife & mom (heard this before?)

Luke & Mary Bowling, 1980	The whole fam damily 1984
Our baby, Shorty

Unable to stay away from the music, in 1982 she joined Topaz, a top-40 club and studio band based in Melbourne, Fla. More good times, more good music.

TOPAZ - 1982 In the middle again .

Smoooooth Operator, Holiday Inn, Cocoa, Florida

During the summer of 1983, she made a visit back to Denver to sit in with Your Father's Mustache Band at some local gigs and appear as a guest  at the Central City Jazz Festival in Central City, Colorado.

At O'Rourke's Cantina (L-R): Al Hayes on tuba, Joe Petrucelli behind me & Ron Kaiser on trumpet. At Central City Jazz Fest with (L-R): Fred Stufft on the drums, me hanging on the mike (trying to look like Janis), John Bredenberg on clarinet, Craig on the trombone

When Mary became single (again! -this time forever!) in 1984, she went to work for Lockheed Space Operations at Kennedy Space Center on the space shuttle program. She also started flying - this time literally - taking lessons in a Piper Tomahawk at the Merritt Island, Florida airport. She received her student license, but with two children, two jobs, two dogs, two cats (she IS a Gemini) plus one band, she just didn't have the time to continue her flying .

Me & the Tomahawk -what a thrill!

 

Check out the rock-star hair!! July 4, 1984 on the beach – 10,000 people at the show	We opened for B.J. Thomas July 4, 1985
Opening Act

In the fall of '85, she took a leave of absence from the band and Lockheed and returned to Colorado to go back to college. When the Shuttle accident terminated her job (and her entire department) with Lockheed, she decided she just wasn't meant for real life, so she left her teenage daughters with her parents in Brush, Colorado and went back to Florida to get into music (again!) full-time.