[1] Mary Karl was born in Harbor Beach, Michigan, and was a graduate of the Noble School of Elocution in Detroit and the Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.
[2] In 1921 she married Fred Karl, who was a co-owner of the telephone system in Harbor Beach with his father and moved to Volusia County, Florida.
Throughout World War II, Karl and the Opportunity school trained thousands of people, teaching citizens how to work in defense industries.
In the post-war aftermath, Karl, supported by the local newspaper and political leaders, as well as working with Mary McLeod Bethune and meeting with Eleanor Roosevelt, convinced the War Assets Administration to donate the Welch center, a complex consisting of fifty-five buildings (classrooms, a library, cafeteria and dormitories), and an Olympic swimming pool to Volusia County.
[4] Though it had always been Karl's long-term goal to have the school become part of the State University System of Florida or a community college, neither happened in her life.