Mary Ford

Mary Ford
Actor	Susse Budde
Appearances	"Outlaws" "Recon" (photograph)
Mentioned	"Confidence Man" "The Brig" "The Incident, Part 1" & "The Incident, Part 2"
Episode Count	2
Death	1976
Death Reason	Shot by Warren
Death Episode	"Outlaws"
Place	Jasper, Alabama, USA
Family	Warren Ford - Husband James Ford - Son Clementine Phillips - Granddaughter Doug - Brother or brother-in-law Brother/brother-in-law

Mary Ford was the mother of James Ford, later known as "Sawyer". She was murdered by her husband just outside her eight-year-old son's bedroom.

Biography

Mary gave birth to a son named James sometime toward the end of 1968. ("Every Man for Himself")  ("The Incident, Part 2")

She has a brother or brother-in-law named Doug. ("The Incident, Part 1") An uncle of Sawyer's is mentioned as having died of a brain tumor. This may be her brother/brother-in-law, or another brother/brother-in-law. ("Deus Ex Machina")

At some point in the mid-1970s, Mary was conned by Anthony Cooper, a con man who at that point was going by the alias "Tom Sawyer". ("The Brig")

Mary engaged in adultery with Cooper (as revealed in Sawyer's letter), who manipulated her and swindled her out of the family's savings. ("Confidence Man")  ("The Brig") Mary's husband, James' father, eventually discovered this, and in a fit of rage, he shot and killed Mary before turning the gun on himself. ("Confidence Man")  ("Outlaws")

Before Mary's husband entered her home to commit the murder-suicide, Mary urged her then 8-year-old son to hide under the bed and be quiet, which likely saved his life as his father didn't see him (but James was hiding right under the bed that his father was sitting on as he killed himself, and he saw his father's legs go limp). James was later present at her funeral in "The Incident, Part 1".

In "The Brig", Sawyer finally confronted Cooper on the rig of the Black Rock. Sawyer told Cooper his mother's name and location (Jasper, Alabama), and Cooper remembered her. As Cooper put it, Mary "practically begged [Cooper] to take her $38,000 dollars and rescue her from her 'sorry little life.'" Cooper admitted to taking the money, but trivialized his involvement by saying he wasn't responsible for what James' father did.

Continuity

Name Issues

• In "Outlaws", Sawyer's mother was credited only as "mom." Two seasons later, in "The Brig", she was referred to verbally by both Sawyer and Cooper as Mary.
• The captions of "Outlaws" mention "Brooke, open the door!" and "[Brooke] What do you want?" However, script coordinator Gregg Nations suggested that the closed captioning was merely mistaken, and the script had Sawyer's father say "Look" rather than "Brooke."

Year of death

In "The Incident, Part 2, a time-travelled Sawyer tells Jack that it is July 1977, and that his folks died when he was eight years old. He states it was "a year ago" and repeats "It's July 1977. Which means that happened last year". This fits the 1976 United States Bicentennial envelope seal for his letter to Cooper, which is seen in several episodes (having occurred in July 1976).

This may contradict previous information delivered about Sawyer's age/the year of his parents' murder-suicide. When he initially lies to Ben about his age in the Season 3 episode "Every Man for Himself", Sawyer is then forced to admit he is not thirty-two, but thirty-five years old. Since this is part of the test for him to behave and the Others have classified files on all of the passengers, this seemingly confirmed he was born around 1969. But this would make him eight years old in 1977, not 1976.

However, continuity is retained if Sawyer turned 36 off-screen the same/following month after the events of "Every Man for Himself" i.e around December 2004. Therefore, his remarks to Jack correlates with the 1976 calendar year (if he simply refers to 7-8 months prior as "last year"), while the significance of the July month and his remark it is July 1977 must be ignored as something that does not correlate per se with the month of his parents' death.